Learn English with Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, a youth organization that fights for freedom on college campuses across the country. Charlie talks about how he got started, how he started his organization, and what it means to be pro-American.
00:00:26.000Thank you, Mark from Illinois, Elena from California, Benjamin from Alaska, Sierra from California, Laura from Georgia, Chris from Illinois, and Melinda from Idaho.
00:01:19.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:40.000So I thought I'd show a little clip of him on a college campus, which is kind of how he got started and give you a feel for how Charlie got started and what he does.
00:01:49.000Israel has done nothing but defended their borders since their legal declaration of existence in 1948.
00:01:57.000Israel bombed Lebanon and I was there and I was evacuated in 2006.
00:02:01.000As a defensive measure when Hezbollah, the terrorist, started attacking them from the north.
00:02:06.000Hezbollah is a recognized international terrorist organization.
00:02:09.000Israel should do everything it possibly can to obliterate Hezbollah.
00:02:30.000I would argue I'm more informed because I didn't go to college and I've traveled the world and I've met with world leaders and I've read many books.
00:03:13.000I just wanted to go back to the basics when he was just starting.
00:03:16.000In fact, let's go to the very basics, which is when you were growing up, how did you get, like, I mean, because we're going to talk a little bit about how you started.
00:03:28.000And at a really early age, you were speaking.
00:05:37.000The Lord has blessed our organization and our effort immensely.
00:05:40.000And the animating force 11 years ago was and is still to this day is I'm not going to do all of it, but I am going to play my role.
00:05:49.000And my role is going to be waking up early and going to bed late, traveling to college and high school campuses and trying to teach people, young people in particular, why this is the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
00:06:01.000And now it has kind of turned into a survival mission of whether or not this republic can continue.
00:06:08.000The opposition, the revolution, as we should call them, they are steps away from the Bastille.
00:06:13.000They're very close to taking over the entire country.
00:06:28.000Now, I think one of the things you were speaking at a conference or something, and a guy who I know passed away recently, but was a real mentor and friend of you, basically kind of grabbed you as a young man and said, you just need to not go to college and you need to start an organization.
00:06:48.000Tell us about that because it was a pretty brave thing to do.
00:06:51.000It was brave on his part because then he told it to my parents, which one of the greatest accomplishments that I've been able to make is now finally I saw this news report.
00:07:04.000I said, you know what, I've made an impact for the betterment of America.
00:07:06.000College enrollment is down 15% in the last year.
00:07:09.000It really, it's a really, really great thing.
00:07:12.000Some of you aren't applauding because that's still, it still hasn't yet sunk in.
00:09:56.000And our mission remains the same, which is good people have to do more to save Western civilization.
00:10:02.000That these bad people are accelerating at such a rapid pace that if the good people remain idle, they're going to destroy this beautiful country that we love.
00:10:17.000I want to talk about Turning Point a little bit because when you started, it was like going to campuses, having these, putting up a table, having a discussion.
00:10:26.000And it started to try to bring truth into these college campuses.
00:10:30.000But that has grown dramatically, right?
00:10:34.000Last time I remember, you had like a thousand chapters and high schools and colleges, but you've gone even to Turning Point Faith and podcast and radio.
00:10:45.000And so tell us about all the aspects, kind of where you started and where you are now.
00:10:51.000Yeah, I mean, it started with, you know, my parents' garage, which is actually great because big companies tend to start garages, Apple, HP, Google.
00:11:48.000Ana Paulina Luna, Isabel Brown, William Witt, some of the biggest voices in the entire conservative movement started as people that we elevated and put on college campuses.
00:11:57.000We have reached billions of people through our online content, podcasts, radio.
00:13:16.000They assaulted her and kidnapped her in a room for three hours because she wanted to defend female sports, the death threats we get on a daily basis.
00:13:24.000We had a speaker, Ian Hayworth, at one of our turning point chapters where the activists outside were tearing up Bibles and throwing death threats.
00:13:31.000My mostly peaceful visit at University of California, Davis, when I was speaking on campus and they came with weapons and broke into windows and Antifa and over 200 police officers had to be mobilized.
00:13:41.000I'm not saying this stuff to have you make me feel bad for me.
00:14:15.000We want more high school chapters, more college chapters, more homeschool parents, more minds changed by media, more church partners.
00:14:23.000We could talk into the church thing, which is a huge thing we're doing.
00:14:26.000But the biggest thing I'm trying to do more than anything else is I'm trying to get more people to independently act with courage and boldness against this totalitarianism that is setting into our country.
00:14:38.000And it's more widespread than ever before.
00:14:41.000It is a virus that has taken over our nation.
00:14:44.000And we need to activate the immune system, which I believe is truth and justice.
00:14:49.000The number one thing people can do is be a truth teller.
00:14:59.000Truth tellers need to rise in record numbers.
00:15:06.000Yeah, I know we've talked about this before, but that book, Live Not By Lies, I think stated it really well, because Alexander Soltzenitson stated it really well.
00:15:14.000The way you stop this totalitarism, the Marxism, is enough people, not a majority, just enough people have to stand and speak the truth.
00:15:25.000And Riley Gaines is a great example of that.
00:15:28.000I do think, I mean, I would love to hear your comment.
00:15:30.000This congressional attempt to protect women and women's sports in Title IX that just passed the U.S. House with no Democrat votes, I think that's a horrible political position for them.
00:15:43.000That's going to, they're going to rue the day of standing on that position because I don't think America is with them on that.
00:16:13.000Colorado just passed a law with huge support, and there'll be no backlash saying that if you're 12 years old and you want to medically mutilate yourself, they will pay for your travel to come to Colorado and they'll help subsidize without parental consent.
00:17:24.000Look, the female sport issue is very simple: it's mentally deranged men filled with hormone blockers and testosterone therapy that are allowed to compete against women, and we somehow should play into their imaginations and their delusions.
00:17:47.000But at the more fundamental level, it is a moral decay and an opportunity for us to say, Let me tell you what's really wrong here.
00:17:54.000What's really wrong is the social contagion of transgenderism, which is that I get to decide for my own nature, that there is no hierarchy, that I get to change my biology.
00:18:06.000To think of how insane this is, right?
00:18:09.000It is as if my own will triumphs the will of God.
00:18:14.000And that is a Western social contagion that's been around a lot longer than the trans craze, everybody.
00:23:10.000When he got up, he had seen, he had read a book called The Moral Mandate to Vote about abortion and about voting and what is a Christian responsibility.
00:23:19.000And he had seen the pictures of his grandkids on the scans from the sonograms.
00:23:26.000And he talked about this in the sermon.
00:23:30.000And he said to the congregation, he said, He said, if you are voting and you're not voting on this issue, you're in sin.
00:23:42.000And then he stopped and he said, I know some of you are going to say, I shouldn't talk about this.
00:23:51.000And the place immediately erupted in a standing ovation because people were so hungry to see a pastor willing to stand up and speak to these issues of the day from the Bible.
00:24:04.000Yeah, and so let me just first brag on the courageous.
00:24:07.000Okay, there are a lot of great pastors out there.
00:24:09.000Second Baptist here is a great church here in Houston.
00:24:41.000But cowards need to step up in a wartime for the gospel and do something because you can stop being a coward.
00:24:48.000How do you know that you have a coward leading your church?
00:24:50.000The Roe versus Wade test is another test.
00:24:52.000If your pastor has not mentioned the last 30 days that there is a trans ideology that is targeting Christians with violent, murderous behavior, you have a coward as a pastor.
00:25:11.000Demand the welfare of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
00:25:16.000You are commanded in the gospel time and time again to care for the least of these, the children.
00:25:21.000Children are being mutilated with unbelievably aggressive pharmacological agents, Lupron and other things.
00:25:28.000It is the church's role to stand up for those that cannot stand up for themselves.
00:25:31.000Not to mention, they might say, well, we don't do politics around here.
00:25:34.000Well, then how do you teach Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, who are all counselors to the king, who cared about government for God's purpose?
00:25:56.000There's a reason why most pastors don't talk about Deuteronomy because it gets people very uncomfortable because their left-wing politics shatter as soon as you read about civil and moral government, separation of powers, consent to the governed, and individual rights, due process, presumption of innocence, not favoring a man in the court of law, whether his wealth comes into a factor.
00:26:13.000Pastors need to be teaching this verse by verse, but that's the problem.
00:26:18.000Bad theology leads to bad politics, is that pastors far too often are afraid of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the books of Moses, the Pentateuch.
00:26:27.000Instead, they just focus on their own myopic version of the gospel.
00:28:25.000So when our rights get violated, it is a violation of the government violating Romans 13, and you never should have shut the church even for a day.
00:28:35.000And I looked around and I saw the American church shuddered and afraid, masked and vaxed, live streaming, and then all of a sudden they're live streaming.
00:28:41.000They say, well, it's just the same as having church in person.
00:28:45.000Having a live stream is like watching a fireplace on a YouTube channel.
00:28:50.000You get all the appearances, but there's no warmth.
00:28:54.000And I'll close with: I'm sorry to riff too long, but then the next chapter, the next interval, that was bad enough.
00:28:59.000Then I saw on my live streams, I had to be taught by these pastors, one after the other, during Floyd of Palooza, when we decided to destroy our country with a bitter lie from hell that were systemically racist, where they said their true original sin is white skin color.
00:29:13.000I said, oh my goodness, this is not an American church that I thought we had.
00:29:17.000I thought we had an American church that at least knew the Constitution, knew our rights, didn't you know, resisted CRT and loved liberty.
00:29:24.000And I looked around and I saw very, very few.
00:29:30.000We are here to excommunicate the mind virus of wokeism out of the American church as quickly as possible.
00:29:40.000One of the things, I mean, gosh, I think one of the last times we were having this kind of discussion, it was before a lot of the stuff in social media.
00:32:12.000And then I lost access to my Twitter account, which, like, boo-hoo, who cares?
00:32:16.000Well, I actually lost access to my Twitter account during a very critical period of time, which was during early voting in 2020, right?
00:32:22.000So I lost access to my Twitter between like October 14th and like October 24th because I tweeted about the Hunter Biden laptop story, right?
00:32:31.000So then they used the politico story, which was now we all know Tony Blinken orchestrated this fabrication of it, right?
00:32:37.000Saying 50 former officials say that this was Russian disinformation.
00:32:41.000They did not allow me to access my Twitter for 10 days when I could have influenced millions of voters potentially, direct election interference from our government.
00:32:51.000And so that's the censorship that I actually am more interested in talking about.
00:32:54.000Me getting banned from YouTube, it's just going to keep on happening.
00:32:57.000They're going to find new stupid rules to find a way to shut me up.
00:32:59.000The one that is, again, I'm looking for a lawfare strategy.
00:33:04.000We need a First Liberty for like every issue.
00:33:06.000We need like a First Liberty for tech censorship.
00:33:08.000We need like a first, you know, we need a group of lawyers that are committed to winning because I haven't found that yet in the tech censorship because we now have documents that Elon Musk has made public that the FBI was involved in censoring voices like mine.
00:33:24.000That's a whole different threshold of censorship, right?
00:33:27.000Technically private companies can shut me up.
00:33:30.000What is blatantly illegal is the federal government of the United States walking into Twitter to say you need to shut up Charlie Kirk.
00:33:39.000That is not just a violation of the First Amendment.
00:33:42.000I mean, this is a Stalinistic abuse of power in the middle of an election to try to get a desired outcome.
00:33:48.000And so if we can find the right legal team, we're going to sue and sue very aggressively because DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, had standing meetings with Twitter every single week with Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter Safety, which used the ability to then silence and shut me up.
00:34:06.000And so that's where my focus on censorship is.
00:34:09.000But can I say one more thing about censorship that I think is important?
00:34:12.000All of you can do something to fix the number one form of censorship in America.
00:34:16.000Joseph Stalin wrote in his private journals, he said, eventually I will not have to censor anybody because I'll get people to shut themselves up.
00:34:23.000The number one form of censorship in America is you shutting up you.
00:34:28.000My encouragement for you tonight is stop policing your own speech because you're afraid you're going to offend somebody's sensitivities.
00:34:36.000The number one form of censorship in America is self-censorship.
00:34:45.000Yeah, I mean, that's the problem is they prey on people who are good people to try to encourage them not to speak the truth because the truth is not allowed right now.
00:35:20.000And it includes in our own neighborhoods and everything, just speaking the truth.
00:35:24.000We can do it with love, but we've got to speak the truth.
00:35:27.000I want to ask you something because a lot of people haven't paid attention to this, but I think it's a big deal.
00:35:31.000You've started to interview some guys, James, an atheist, an atheist, but that's been really, I think, something very important to you and what you found.
00:35:45.000And talk a little bit about what you've learned and what you've tried to sort of educate your audience on that I think a lot of people aren't aware of.
00:35:53.000Yeah, I've got him now to be an agnostic.
00:37:20.000If you've ever had brain surgery or get your wisdom teeth removed or got on an airplane, do you make sure that the pilot shares your theology before you fly from Houston to Chicago?
00:37:31.000You know, sometimes you find experts in a certain field that can help you towards something, accomplish your mission, because they're experts in the field.
00:37:38.000And so James Lindsay happens to be an expert in diversity, equity, and inclusion on this.
00:37:42.000But my focus on this is I believe the first 11 books of Genesis are the answers to so many of the problems we're dealing with.
00:37:48.000I think most pastors in America refuse or don't even know how to teach the first 11 books of Genesis.
00:37:54.000The first 11 books of Genesis were written as a direct refutation of pagan polytheistic river civilization.
00:38:00.000We are seeing the remergence of the old gods.
00:38:02.000What's the name of that book you mentioned by Return of the Gods.
00:38:04.000Yeah, and I've even read it, but it seems like we're talking about the same thing on parallel tracks.
00:38:09.000I believe there are five fake religions that are dominating in America right now because look, as Christianity becomes less popular, something's going to fill its place.
00:38:43.000They're going to find a worldview from somewhere.
00:38:46.000And those are the five big places they replace it with.
00:38:48.000But Genesis 1 through 11 is the whole ballgame, in my opinion, when it comes to politics, government.
00:38:54.000And this is why I wish pastors would talk about it more.
00:38:56.000It tells you why we're here, why we were created, what is a human being, whether or not we have eternal purposes to this, and what happens when power gets too concentrated.
00:39:06.000That's just one of many lessons, right?
00:39:08.000Genesis 1, 26, 127, it says that we are image-bearers of our Creator.
00:39:15.000If that verse is true, that means that you as a human being are not an accident of Darwinian evolution.
00:39:20.000It means you are not a clump of cells.
00:39:22.000It means you were made with intentionality and purpose and with love and with meaning and with purpose.
00:39:29.000That means that everything the college academics are teaching our kids is a bitter lie.
00:39:33.000They teach the kids the opposite, that you are an accident.
00:39:37.000It also means that there's an objective order and objective truth.
00:39:40.000If you were to say, Charlie, what is one of the most dangerous things taught on college campuses?
00:39:45.000Moral subjectivism is one of the most dangerous things, that I have my truth and you have your truth.
00:39:51.000And so then Genesis 11, which is what happens when people try to congregate authority, you know, concentrate authority too much, which of course is the city of Babel.
00:40:01.000And God does not look kindly on people trying to rule here on this earth without checks and balances or decentralized power structures.
00:40:08.000And so I'm going on the road talking about a lot about Genesis 1 through 11.
00:40:12.000I think we need to pray over these scriptures.
00:40:13.000I think there's so much, it's so instructive there, and it's unique because that really is the eternal canon of Genesis.
00:40:20.000Because in Genesis 12, it's like, oh, here's Abram, and then kind of history begins.
00:40:24.000I believe Genesis 1 through 11 is given to us as an instructive tool for such a time as this to be able to defeat the diabolical return of pagan religion in America.
00:40:36.000Genesis 1 through 11, I think, is one of the best ways to do that.
00:40:44.000I'd encourage people to listen to some of those podcasts, interviews, dialogues you've had.
00:40:49.000I mean, one of the things that I think was great was this whole idea that God always has distinction.
00:41:02.000There's always, and what you're watching today is the attempt, and this is what Marxism does, to destroy distinctives.
00:41:10.000And people don't realize what's going on there.
00:41:12.000So order, civilization, relies on distinctions.
00:41:17.000When you have chaos, it is the blurring or the elimination of distinctions.
00:41:21.000So Genesis 1 through 11 lays out, it's like seven or eight distinctions, but let me just kind of tell you, the distinction between life and death, the distinction between God and man, the distinction between man and nature, the distinction between the profane and the holy, the distinction between male and female, right?
00:41:38.000The distinction between adult and child.
00:41:40.000These distinctions are under assault every single day by the arsonist left.
00:41:47.000They need to get rid of the distinctions.
00:41:52.000And the most important distinction, the distinction between good and evil.
00:41:56.000And the first dialogue on good and evil, where it's so interesting, where it's so obvious that God gave us some form of a moral compass, but it's not sufficient, is Cain and Abel, where God comes from the heaven and he asks Cain, hey, where's your brother?
00:42:09.000And it's one of the great lines of the Bible.
00:42:11.000And he says, what am I, my brother's keeper?
00:42:15.000And it's such an interesting answer, isn't it?
00:42:17.000Because if he didn't think there was something somewhat wrong with murder, he would have said, well, God, I murdered him.
00:42:31.000And God, as this dialogue back and forth, ends up obviously admonishing him and his future bloodlines.
00:42:36.000And you see this, this, the Noahic covenant in Genesis 7 and 8, which is so clear that the elimination of a transcendent good leads you to moral anarchy.
00:42:51.000Everything the left is trying to do is trying to eliminate distinctions.
00:42:54.000There is no difference than man and woman.
00:42:56.000There is no difference than good and evil.
00:42:58.000There is no difference between profane and holy.
00:43:00.000There is no difference between God and man.
00:43:02.000For example, everyone here tonight believes that there is a God and you are not him.
00:43:08.000The left does not believe either of those things.
00:43:13.000If there was a God, I would be that person.
00:43:15.000And so when you look at distinctions and the way God ordered the universe, which is, again, laid out so beautifully in Genesis 1 through 11, you look at the serpent, Satan, Satan, in the garden.
00:43:29.000His goal is to confuse the distinctions.
00:43:33.000Because God gave specific orders, and what does Satan try to do?
00:44:55.000So from being a father, I mean, it's a total game changer.
00:45:00.000If you think I was radical before, and now I'm very radical.
00:45:04.000No, but I mean, it's a motivating factor, right?
00:45:07.000Because I mean, I'm currently trying to create, or at least try to have some semblance of a country I grew up in.
00:45:16.000Here I am, 29 years old, doing like the boomer thing.
00:45:19.000If only she would know the country I grew up in.
00:45:22.000It's like this has been a radical cultural revolution the last five years, hasn't it?
00:45:26.000It's happened very quickly with hyper-ferocity and aggression.
00:45:32.000And so, I mean, it gives me a reason to fight, but it also humbles me, but it makes me realize exactly why the bad guys want people to stop having kids.
00:45:46.000Because it anchors you to reality, to God, and to nature.
00:45:52.000As birth rates have plummeted in America, so many other things have gone awry.
00:45:57.000When you have a child, it's a lot harder to be a BLM activist.
00:46:06.000You're less likely to burn down a Wendy's if you have a child.
00:46:12.000And in some way, in some way, like these early 30s-somethings that studied North African lesbian poetry from the University of Houston, and they have $200,000 in debt, and they're not married and have no kids for multiple reasons, and they're really angry.
00:46:26.000And I can kind of see why they're angry for many reasons, but they haven't yet quite found out a purpose.
00:46:34.000And we've told, oh my goodness, the disservice we've done to our young people.
00:48:01.000I have not seen activist energy this intense, this ferocious, of anything I've done in 11 years.
00:48:07.000It makes the BLM stuff look like child's play.
00:48:11.000And they're going to run over all of you because they just think they have total moral impunity.
00:48:16.000At the same time, yes, they control the CIA, they control Goldman Sachs, they control the corporations, they have Soros, they have Lorene Powell jobs, they totally screwed up our elections, they control all this.
00:48:26.000But all of that to be said, we have two things they don't have.
00:48:30.000We have the truth, and we do outnumber them.
00:48:34.000It's just our numbers aren't really doing much, right?
00:48:36.000And you might say, well, Charlie, what can I do then, right?
00:49:32.000Get back to the spiritual disciplines.
00:49:34.000Are you fasting on a weekly basis for your nation for at least 24 hours?
00:49:38.000And finally, are you learning about your nation or your nation's roots for at least an hour a day?
00:49:43.000If you're doing those three things, you're going to see the Holy Spirit will come to you and show you ways that you can act, things that you can do.
00:49:50.000Get back to the spiritual disciplines.
00:49:53.000And so I'm neither a pessimist or an optimist.
00:49:55.000If I were to tell you, you know, I'm a pessimist.
00:50:45.000It could go the way where there's a revival and an awakening and a grit and an endurance and a stamina of people that refuse to break, that get tougher the more that we get thrown at, and we build in numbers and we homeschool our kids and we build beautiful things and we build businesses.
00:51:01.000And all of a sudden, we look back at 22 and 23 as times where we pushed through, or it could go the other way, where we weaken in resolve and we fight amongst ourselves and we get cynical and apathetic and nihilistic, and the bad guys steamroll us.
00:51:24.000How this country goes, I have no idea.
00:51:27.000But I could say this: I have dedicated my 11 years, and I will dedicate as long as I have breath in these lungs every single day to fight for liberty and for freedom against these bad guys.
00:51:37.000My, I implore you to try to do the same because look, here's the one thing I know, and I fight these people every single day, and they're not good people.
00:51:52.000They fear that if we actually get our act together, if we have an attitude where we're going to stay in the game of stamina, of endurance, of a long-term vision, and they can't invoke our surrender, then we're going to win.