The Charlie Kirk Show - May 25, 2026


The Spirit of '76: Remembering America's War Heroes 250 Years Later


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 9 minutes

Words per minute

160.54

Word count

11,176

Sentence count

744

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

55

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, host Charlie Kirk is joined by historian Patrick ODonnell to talk about Memorial Day and the legacy of those who paid the ultimate price for our country. Charlie and Blake discuss what Memorial Day means to them and how they celebrate it.

Transcript

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Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.
00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.
00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.
00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.
00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter.
00:00:33.000 Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter.
00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.
00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.
00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.
00:00:43.000 And I encourage you to do the same.
00:00:45.000 Here I am.
00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.
00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:49.000 Here we go.
00:00:56.000 Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
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00:01:13.000 That is Noble Gold Investments.com.
00:01:17.000 All right.
00:01:18.000 Happy Memorial Day to all of you across this beautiful country from sea to shining sea.
00:01:24.000 Blake, I am with you.
00:01:25.000 I think that this, as far as like civic holidays that we celebrate as a country, there is no more important holiday than Memorial Day.
00:01:33.000 Absolutely.
00:01:34.000 Yeah.
00:01:35.000 I think Fourth of July, you get more fireworks out of this one, but I think.
00:01:39.000 This is the one that really reminds us what it took to create America, build America, defend America, preserve it.
00:01:48.000 And it's a solemn day.
00:01:50.000 And we celebrate it with parades and things like that.
00:01:52.000 But there's also earlier today, you probably saw the wreath laying at Arlington National Cemetery.
00:01:58.000 It's a somber day.
00:02:00.000 It's a day to reflect on those who paid the ultimate price for our nation.
00:02:05.000 And, you know, we're grateful and we're grateful to be with you guys.
00:02:10.000 And, you know, we thought we'd mix it up.
00:02:11.000 We wanted to have longer.
00:02:13.000 Forum conversations today, not focus as much on the breaking news, but focus on our country.
00:02:18.000 I think today is really the kickoff of America 250.
00:02:21.000 Of course, we had the rededicate event in DC where we're rededicating the nation to our faith and providence and all of those things, and that we would pray that Jesus would continue guiding this country into the future.
00:02:35.000 And that's important, but Memorial Day is really the kickoff.
00:02:38.000 So here we go.
00:02:40.000 Blake, why don't you welcome our guest here?
00:02:42.000 All righty.
00:02:42.000 Well, we want to remember, of course, I think.
00:02:46.000 This is especially important.
00:02:47.000 250 years, we look back on how did we get here 250 years ago?
00:02:52.000 And of course, we had to win our independence.
00:02:54.000 We had to battle against the most powerful country in the world at the time to win that independence.
00:03:00.000 So we thought we should speak to a historian of that conflict, the American Revolutionary War.
00:03:06.000 And so, and it's also a person who's a friend of mine.
00:03:09.000 We played in the same war game club in Washington, D.C.
00:03:13.000 So we are joined by Patrick O'Donnell.
00:03:16.000 He is a Revolutionary War historian.
00:03:19.000 Author of Revolutionary Snipers, of Washington's Immortals, numerous other books, and the Civil War.
00:03:27.000 Patrick, welcome to the show.
00:03:28.000 It's great to be here again.
00:03:30.000 It was with Charlie Kirk in 2024 that we discussed The Unvanquished.
00:03:34.000 It was one of my favorite interviews.
00:03:36.000 Yeah, I remember that actually.
00:03:39.000 And it was a fascinating conversation.
00:03:41.000 And people should go check it out because guess what?
00:03:44.000 We have all of the old catalog with Charlie available on podcasts.
00:03:48.000 So, yeah, 2020.
00:03:50.000 When did you release that book?
00:03:52.000 So they can approximate it.
00:03:53.000 It was in May 2024.
00:03:54.000 May 2024.
00:03:55.000 So please do.
00:03:57.000 Yeah, best selling book.
00:03:58.000 Yeah, awesome.
00:04:00.000 Well, let's go back.
00:04:01.000 So we say 250th.
00:04:02.000 Yes.
00:04:03.000 But, and we talked about this recently, it's really almost like 200, you have to go back almost 230, 230 years when you're understanding the revolution and probably really farther back than that because the colonies governed themselves for 150 years before that, you know, and they created a whole culture.
00:04:20.000 You think 150 years, that's a long time to develop a culture and develop, you know, rules and norms and ways of governing oneself as a colonies.
00:04:29.000 But take us back, maybe, Patrick, in the lead up.
00:04:33.000 Here's a trivia question Who was the first American colonialist?
00:04:37.000 To die in what would become the revolution?
00:04:44.000 It depends on where you want to go with that because the revolution begins in the mid 1860s.
00:04:53.000 And it begins in the 1760s.
00:04:57.000 It begins with the Stamp Act.
00:04:58.000 And it's here that the colonies go into economic rebellion against the greatest empire of the time in existence, which was the British and the Crown.
00:05:11.000 And they wield enormous economic power by boycotting British goods.
00:05:17.000 I mean, the real takeaway and why this is important today is the founders understood dependence.
00:05:25.000 And if you are dependent on another nation for your livelihood or for the goods that you have in your supply chain, you don't really have any freedom at all.
00:05:34.000 And that applies today with China and other places.
00:05:39.000 But one of the great aspects of the American Revolution.
00:05:43.000 Is the non importation exportation agreement, which was an extension of what they initially did during the Stamp Act, but it begins in 1774.
00:05:52.000 But the Revolutionary War is first about economics, but then it's about really ideas.
00:05:59.000 And the most important ideas in world history are really founded from the American Revolution the ideas of liberty and freedom, which will shake empires to the core and break them down.
00:06:13.000 And it begins.
00:06:15.000 In the 1770s and really 1773 and 74, there's a massive it's here that the political revolution is really kind of comes to being.
00:06:31.000 And it's in 1774, though, in September, on September 1st, if you're familiar with Somerville, Massachusetts, right in Cambridge, right outside of Boston, there's what looks like it to be an old windmill there.
00:06:47.000 And that is the old powder magazine that the colonists had in 1774.
00:06:54.000 And this is where the kinetic revolutionary war really begins.
00:07:00.000 It's General Gage conducts a covert operation to take 200 half casts of black powder away from that magazine.
00:07:09.000 The raid is successful.
00:07:11.000 What happens next is 10,000 people from the colonies, armed to the teeth in most cases, descend on Boston Common.
00:07:20.000 In protest.
00:07:21.000 And why did they do that?
00:07:23.000 Because they're about to be disarmed.
00:07:25.000 It doesn't matter how great your revolutionary ideas are.
00:07:29.000 If you have no weapons, it doesn't matter.
00:07:32.000 I mean, it's something that's the lesson that's being learned in Iran right now.
00:07:35.000 And that's exactly what the British planned to do. 0.65
00:07:38.000 They planned to disarm the colonies.
00:07:41.000 And they did it because they knew that black powder was scarce.
00:07:46.000 There were weapons laying around from the French and Indian War, but there was hardly any black powder.
00:07:51.000 Because production within the colonies had been outsourced to India at the time because it was cheaper, but there are also royal bans on black powder to keep the colonies in check. 0.81
00:07:51.000 And it was. 0.81
00:08:03.000 But it's the beginning of these raids that will culminate in Lexington and Concord that will begin the actual Revolutionary War.
00:08:16.000 And you got the Boston Massacre.
00:08:18.000 That was a little before that.
00:08:19.000 But I guess we have a minute to break here, but if you were to ask, One of those men who descended on Boston Common or who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, the guys who first joined General Washington's army.
00:08:31.000 And you asked them, even before the Declaration of Independence, what do you think they would have said?
00:08:35.000 Why had they joined this army?
00:08:37.000 What were they fighting for?
00:08:38.000 They were fighting for America.
00:08:42.000 They were fighting for their liberties and freedom.
00:08:46.000 And Revolutionary Snipers, which I just finished, is a trilogy of three books on the American Revolutionary War.
00:08:52.000 I've spent 16 years of my life writing 14 books.
00:08:57.000 And three of these books are in the American Revolution.
00:09:00.000 They're specifically on elite units in the American Revolution the Marylanders, the Marbleheaders, which were part of the original at Lexington and Concord, but formed the Navy and also Road Washington across the door, and Revolutionary Snipers.
00:09:17.000 It's here in 1774 that's really kind of the precursor of the Declaration of Independence, is something called the Fort Gower Resolves, where these men had just fought.
00:09:30.000 Against a massive Native American army and won. 0.73
00:09:34.000 And it's here that they declare their allegiance to the crown, but with a big butt. 0.98
00:09:40.000 It's about American liberty and freedom, and they're willing to fight for it.
00:09:44.000 Incredible thing.
00:09:45.000 So, again, we're talking about 250 years back, is of course the year of the Declaration of Independence, but it's also, I think a lot of people are aware, the year of the great, kind of the greatest crisis of the American Revolution.
00:09:59.000 I think 76 is the year where we come.
00:10:02.000 Closest to losing the whole thing.
00:10:05.000 Can you paint that picture for us?
00:10:07.000 What was the military situation like 250 years ago?
00:10:10.000 I know this is a big part of Washington's Immortals, for example, that's the Maryland Line Regiment that basically saves America, the American cause, from being annihilated.
00:10:20.000 Paint that picture for us.
00:10:22.000 You're absolutely right.
00:10:23.000 1776 is a great turning point, but it was also the origins of one of the great crisis periods in American history where everything could have been lost.
00:10:35.000 And there were several.
00:10:36.000 Key inflection points where this occurs.
00:10:40.000 The three books that I've written are on elite units that touch upon these inflection points.
00:10:47.000 And it's their individual agency that saves the war and Washington's army.
00:10:53.000 But the first great inflection point is at the Battle of Brooklyn.
00:10:57.000 And this begins on the night of August 26, 27, 1776, where the greatest land battle.
00:11:09.000 Up until that point begins where the British land in Brooklyn, Long Island, and they outflank Washington's army.
00:11:20.000 And it's here that, you know, everything could be lost.
00:11:24.000 If 10,000 troops of the Continental Army are surrounded and annihilated and Washington is captured, the war is likely over.
00:11:32.000 But it's the efforts of the men in the three books I've written, especially beginning with the Maryland line and Washington's immortals.
00:11:42.000 Where there's an epic rear guard action near a stone house where they charge three times with fixed bayonets.
00:11:49.000 They sacrifice themselves to open a hole in the British lines that allows the remainder of Washington's army to escape to the fortifications in Brooklyn Heights.
00:12:00.000 And it's here that Washington has a great decision to make.
00:12:03.000 Does he stay and fight or does he retreat?
00:12:06.000 And a massive hailstorm comes in, a nor'easter, and it's in a mansion in Brooklyn Heights at the Three Chimneys.
00:12:14.000 Where he decides, he has a council of war, and he decides to evacuate Brooklyn.
00:12:20.000 And it's on the shoulders of the indispensable men from Marblehead that they escape.
00:12:28.000 And this is the American Dunkirk.
00:12:30.000 This is an incredible story.
00:12:33.000 They gather all the small boats that they can.
00:12:36.000 They only have literally hours to gather these boats and gather 9,500 Americans, put them in the boats, and then cross the East River.
00:12:47.000 Over to Manhattan.
00:12:49.000 But oh, they got to do it in the middle of a giant 20,000 man Hessian and British army in their front and the Royal Navy in the East River behind them.
00:13:00.000 And they somehow have to do it.
00:13:02.000 And initially, none of it goes well at all.
00:13:06.000 The winds are not favoring them.
00:13:08.000 And suddenly, the winds change, but it's on the backs of the greatest sailors in the Continental Army, the Marblehead men of the 14th Regiment and John Glover.
00:13:21.000 That they are somehow able to get across.
00:13:23.000 And it's this is a race against time, Blake and Andrew.
00:13:27.000 They have to ferry the army across nearly a dozen times back and forth.
00:13:33.000 And it's a race against time because dawn is coming and with it, you know, visibility and the entire small fleet of small boats conducting this American Dunkirk are about to be blown to smithereens by the Royal Navy.
00:13:48.000 But it's here that God's hand, you know, shows itself in a fog.
00:13:54.000 Miraculously, at the right time at around 5 30 a.m., comes in and screens the movement of the rest of John Glover's boats.
00:14:04.000 General Washington and the riflemen from American snipers are in that rear guard.
00:14:10.000 They're the last men on the boats, but they make it across in one of the greatest evacuations in military history.
00:14:16.000 It's really incredible.
00:14:17.000 You think of everything that's ever happened in American history the Emancipation Proclamation, winning World War II, landing on the moon, everything we've invented, the right flyer.
00:14:28.000 And it's all resting on these men who maybe, I don't even know if they've heard the text of the Declaration of Independence yet.
00:14:35.000 It's only about a month old.
00:14:37.000 They're surrounded.
00:14:38.000 It's an incredible thing.
00:14:39.000 I looked up while you were describing it, since it's in Brooklyn.
00:14:42.000 If you want to go, if you're in that area, the scene where this all happened, it's in Prospect Park of Brooklyn.
00:14:47.000 That's where the monument to the battle itself is.
00:14:50.000 And of course, it's the waterways nearby that they would have been fleeing across.
00:14:53.000 I love the way you describe that, Patrick.
00:14:56.000 The American Dunkirk.
00:14:58.000 I think that's like, for our modern context, that really brings it home.
00:15:01.000 It's the American Thermopylae where the Marylanders make this epic stand.
00:15:06.000 And I will add that the men of the Maryland 400, most of them have never, 256 men have vanished to history.
00:15:17.000 It is very likely that there is a mass grave in Brooklyn of their bodies and their sacrifice to this day.
00:15:25.000 Many of them were also captured, and they may have been on floating concentration camps in New York Harbor and just.
00:15:33.000 Just tossed overboard like bags of trash, their bones.
00:15:37.000 So, this is a story of epic sacrifice.
00:15:40.000 It's a fitting story for Memorial Day because if it hadn't been their sacrifice, an hour, as one historian at the time said, an hour more precious in our history than any other, we would not be here today.
00:15:52.000 But that, I will add, is only one disastrous defeat in 1776.
00:15:59.000 It was one after the other.
00:16:03.000 How much are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness worth to you?
00:16:07.000 This is the question America's founders had to answer.
00:16:10.000 You see, for more than 150 years, America's 13 colonies governed themselves until Britain declared they had no right to self rule.
00:16:19.000 So, ordinary people had to make extraordinary choices and risk their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight for independence.
00:16:26.000 And against all odds, they won.
00:16:28.000 And in victory, they built one of the most stable and lasting republics in human history.
00:16:33.000 Now, experience the American Revolution like never before, thanks to our friends at Hillsdale College.
00:16:38.000 Revolutionary America, a new documentary from Hillsdale Studios and narrated by Tom Selleck, brings the founding of our nation to life through the voices of those who lived it, alongside insights from leading scholars and commentators.
00:16:52.000 I'm telling you, Hillsdale has outdone themselves with this.
00:16:54.000 It's amazing.
00:16:56.000 You've got to check this out.
00:16:58.000 You've got to, frankly, you've got to buy tickets to see this film.
00:17:02.000 So please, please, please, it's something you could take the whole family to.
00:17:05.000 You could take your friends.
00:17:07.000 I mean, listen, at a time when history is off.
00:17:09.000 Often distorted in schools and classes and media, this is your chance to see the story as it really happened and ask yourself what would you risk for freedom?
00:17:18.000 Face the decisions our founders grappled with in Revolutionary American, a Hillsdale Studios film, only in theaters May 31st through June 2nd.
00:17:25.000 So get your tickets now by going to hillsdale.edu/slash revolution.
00:17:30.000 You do not want to miss this opportunity to see this on the big screen: hillsdale.edu/slash revolution to locate a theater near you and buy tickets for Revolutionary American.
00:17:41.000 One more time, that's hillsdale.edu/slash revolution.
00:17:48.000 Well, we were discussing the great crisis period of the American Revolution, 1776.
00:17:55.000 We just covered the Battle of Brooklyn Heights and the escape, the American Dunkirk.
00:17:59.000 Yeah.
00:18:00.000 I don't know if there's another crisis that happens between this, but why don't you take us to the story?
00:18:04.000 We know how the year ends, and I know this is also the cover of The Indispensables.
00:18:09.000 Another great crisis: Washington's crossing of the Delaware to end the year of our independence.
00:18:15.000 Absolutely, Blake.
00:18:16.000 I mean, after the Battle of Brooklyn, the British land in Manhattan, and it's punctuated by a few victories.
00:18:25.000 For instance, at Harlem Heights, there's a victory over British regular soldiers, some of the elite units.
00:18:32.000 And it's the men of the riflemen that actually deal that defeat on the British, as well as they stop a landing where 25 riflemen armed with the Pennsylvania Long Rifle, which is the sniper rifle of its day, it was path breaking technology.
00:18:48.000 They stop an entire British invasion at Throg's Neck.
00:18:51.000 But really, after that, it's one disaster after another.
00:18:54.000 And Washington's army of 20,000 is in full retreat across Manhattan, up through White Plains.
00:19:01.000 They then cross the Hudson River and they're going into New Jersey and they're trying as quickly as they can to get to the Delaware River and across it to the friendly farms of Pennsylvania and hopefully safety.
00:19:15.000 But it's at this time, there's massive hyperinflation.
00:19:18.000 The army of 20,000 is crumbling because The enlistments are expiring at the end of the year.
00:19:26.000 You know, Washington's army is reduced to, you know, 5,000 or so.
00:19:31.000 And it's here that, you know, it's the great crisis point.
00:19:35.000 Washington knows if he doesn't conduct a counteroffensive that changes the course of things, all will be lost.
00:19:43.000 And it's at Trenton that he plans really one of the greatest counteroffensives, one of the great battles in American history that will change the tide of the Revolutionary War.
00:19:55.000 And it's a dangerous and hazardous thing because the British and their allies, the Hessians, Are outposted across New Jersey.
00:20:05.000 And he chooses Trenton, which is one of the more vulnerable outposts, but it's manned by the Hessian lion, Colonel Rawl, who's one of their best commanders.
00:20:19.000 But like the Battle of Brooklyn, they have to cross a river.
00:20:22.000 And, you know, they have to do it secretly because if the plan is known, the entire thing can be blown.
00:20:30.000 When indeed the British intelligence did pick up that Washington was coming.
00:20:35.000 But it's a nor'easter that once again comes into play.
00:20:39.000 And it's once again that Washington asked John Glover if he can take the army across.
00:20:45.000 And he said, Don't worry about it.
00:20:46.000 My boys can handle it.
00:20:48.000 There were three prongs of the attack on Trenton, two of them failed.
00:20:53.000 It was only the men of the Marblehead Regiment that got the army across because the tides in the Delaware River were such that there were floating chunks of ice.
00:21:06.000 There was a massive nor'easter, snow was coming down.
00:21:09.000 It was impassable to anybody but the most experienced seafarers of the Marblehead Regiment.
00:21:16.000 And they'd make it across and they attack Trenton at dawn.
00:21:21.000 They're behind schedule, but they surprised the garrison.
00:21:26.000 They were not, it's like in all the storybooks out there, these guys were not drunk and idle.
00:21:32.000 They were actually sleeping in their uniforms with their muskets in hand and ready for the American attack.
00:21:38.000 In fact, British intelligence actually tipped them off.
00:21:41.000 And I get into the Indispensables as well as Revolutionary Snipers, which comes out in November, and Washington's Immortals, and how that intelligence was relayed.
00:21:52.000 But an earlier raid, as well as the Nor'easter, sort of convinced Rawl that it probably already occurred.
00:21:59.000 And he wasn't as alert as he should have been.
00:22:03.000 And they attack, and it's a sniper's rifle that will take down and mortally wound Johann Rawl and will swing the course of the battle.
00:22:14.000 But this is just 10 days in crucial American history and three battles, which will change the course of world history.
00:22:22.000 And it's all part of Washington's counteroffensive at Trenton.
00:22:26.000 And then there's the second Battle of Trenton, which hardly anybody's ever heard about, but it's a great inflection point as well.
00:22:32.000 And a key bridge had to be held, and the Continentals were across something called Assam Peak Creek on the other side of Trenton.
00:22:39.000 And had the bridge fallen, the army would have been ripped apart and destroyed, just like the Battle of Brooklyn.
00:22:45.000 But Washington escapes.
00:22:48.000 They hold the bridge against all odds.
00:22:51.000 The riflemen literally delay them for about six or seven hours, chewing up precious daylight as they're on their way to the bridge, and then they hold the bridge against all odds.
00:23:03.000 Washington himself is at the rail of the bridge, leading his men.
00:23:07.000 I mean, that's how just the leadership is striking across the board from enlisted men to General Washington himself.
00:23:19.000 And then they win the surprise battle at Princeton and change the course of history.
00:23:25.000 And it's about agency.
00:23:26.000 It's about individuals that will change and shape and bend history.
00:23:31.000 Yeah.
00:23:32.000 Ordinary continental soldiers.
00:23:34.000 This is what's interesting to me.
00:23:34.000 Yeah.
00:23:35.000 Citizen soldiers.
00:23:36.000 Yeah.
00:23:37.000 This is what's interesting to me, Patrick, is that you've got 13 colonies, right?
00:23:43.000 I understand a lot of this is happening in New Jersey and, you know, Massachusetts, New York.
00:23:48.000 So it was up north mostly in this particular season.
00:23:52.000 But you've got, because I don't think a lot of people realize nowadays how much.
00:23:58.000 If you were a colonialist, you identified with your state versus Americans, being an American at this point, right?
00:24:07.000 What was holding them together in these dark days?
00:24:09.000 Like, how did they keep going after defeat, defeat, defeat?
00:24:15.000 Especially understanding that the British force was so formidable and was, you know, the greatest force militarily in the world at that point.
00:24:25.000 What's so remarkable is that it's small groups of individuals that will hold the army together.
00:24:32.000 In its greatest times of stress.
00:24:35.000 And the American Revolution was an insurgency.
00:24:38.000 It was our first civil war because not everybody was on board at all with the Revolutionary War.
00:24:45.000 And they would jump sides back and forth.
00:24:47.000 And it was also a conventional war against the greatest power at the time.
00:24:51.000 And, you know, I'll never forget, I asked a member of Darby's Rangers, I've interviewed 4,000 World War II veterans.
00:24:59.000 And, you know, throughout the course of my I've been writing for 27 years full time and I've been interviewing people for the last 40 years or more.
00:25:08.000 And I asked him, Are you the greatest generation?
00:25:11.000 And he said to me straight up, He said, Patrick, what about the boys of 77 and 76?
00:25:17.000 He said, The men of the cause, the men that believed in the Revolutionary War. 0.93
00:25:24.000 And he is absolutely right.
00:25:25.000 The greatest generation is this generation because they not only fought the greatest empire of the time, but also.
00:25:33.000 Anybody's greatest enemy, and that would be fellow Americans.
00:25:36.000 And they also forged the ideals and ideas of the American Revolution that would change history and continues to change history.
00:25:46.000 And it's these ideals and parts of our founding that I think are so important now as we're going through great change as well.
00:25:54.000 And it's so important to look back at our founding, and it's probably what's going to save us.
00:25:59.000 So they were, you know, Blake asked the question, you know, what were they?
00:26:04.000 Fighting for, right?
00:26:05.000 Obviously, there was the Stamp Acts and the Intolerables, and there was all these things that were circulating.
00:26:11.000 But again, this sense of home and their identity.
00:26:16.000 Like, when did Americans start thinking of themselves as Americans?
00:26:20.000 It begins prior to the Revolutionary War.
00:26:22.000 It begins in that period of over 150 years where they were self governing and they were determining their independence, and it forms over time.
00:26:34.000 Of this identity of being an American.
00:26:37.000 And what you have is at the very beginning of the American Revolution, there's a sense that perhaps the king, who many of them still pledge allegiance to, can somehow resolve their grievances.
00:26:52.000 But they start to move away and closer and closer to full independence.
00:26:58.000 And as you alluded to at the beginning, a series of atrocities, beginning with.
00:27:05.000 You go back to the 1760s and beyond, where the Royal Navy is impressing, kidnapping Americans from places like Marblehead.
00:27:15.000 And it's a lifetime of service in the Royal Navy.
00:27:17.000 They never come home to their families, or they're killed on board ships, or the Boston Massacre.
00:27:26.000 You know, these are things that will crystallize the American resolve of the American Revolution and the American identity.
00:27:39.000 And this is where people will put their lives and their fortunes on the line for a country that had yet to be born, which is really remarkable.
00:27:50.000 Yeah, I think that's one of the most interesting things.
00:27:53.000 I mean, just to give you sort of a sense, let's just, you know, we look at modern combat where people are well paid and they're well equipped.
00:28:01.000 These men of the pause in 76, many of them were shoeless, literally, their trails of blood.
00:28:09.000 As they went to the boats at Trenton, they would mark the army's march to Trenton.
00:28:16.000 They had poor clothes.
00:28:19.000 Frostfight was rampant.
00:28:22.000 They were not paid.
00:28:24.000 Blake, I'll throw it to you.
00:28:26.000 We've absorbed a lot of content here, so I want to make sure that your brain is reflected.
00:28:32.000 I mean, we've just jumped around all over this the Revolutionary War.
00:28:36.000 We wanted to really remember it because sometimes I feel it feels odd.
00:28:41.000 Sometimes it's a forgotten war.
00:28:42.000 We have a lot of World War II stuff.
00:28:44.000 We have a lot of Civil War stuff.
00:28:45.000 Memorial Day itself was born out of the Civil War.
00:28:48.000 But this is the war that actually could have extinguished America.
00:28:53.000 We've just seen it came very close to doing so.
00:28:56.000 I want to talk about something.
00:28:58.000 Charlie thought a lot about leadership.
00:29:01.000 We've mentioned General Washington repeatedly throughout this.
00:29:05.000 Patrick, can you create a sketch of George Washington as a leader?
00:29:09.000 What set him apart?
00:29:11.000 How is he holding this army together?
00:29:14.000 How is he becoming the man who would become the father of this country?
00:29:17.000 George Washington is the indispensable man of the Revolutionary War.
00:29:22.000 It's his leadership that is priceless and indispensable in making things happen because he understands the concepts of liberty and freedom and how those need to translate not only in the halls of Congress, but also on the battlefield.
00:29:40.000 And things like treating prisoners properly, these things transcend the halls of Congress and the battlefield, and they become part of the American way of war.
00:29:51.000 But he understands diplomacy.
00:29:53.000 He's able to enter, he's the first general since General Pershing, really, to have to interact with an ally.
00:30:01.000 I mean, after the Battle of Saratoga, the French come into war as well as the Spanish later on.
00:30:07.000 And it's this understanding of diplomacy and working with allies that he's able to coordinate that.
00:30:11.000 But he's also dealing with the politics of the day.
00:30:16.000 And it's as ruthless in many ways as it is today, where you have people that are.
00:30:22.000 That are in the Civil War that are hardcore loyalists, but you also have people on the Patriot side that you've got a full spectrum.
00:30:30.000 Everybody from a Benedict Arnold, who's a great general at the very beginning of the war, to a full blown traitor at the end of the war, to people that are just backbiting Washington, buying it for his position.
00:30:43.000 You know, through all of that and through, you know, not having his men paid or poorly equipped and everything else, he holds the army together.
00:30:54.000 The thing is, I would point out that the books that I've written, the three books, you know, Washington's The Indispensables, Washington's Immortals, and now Revolutionary Snipers, this is about the men of the line, the privates, the corporals, the sergeants that really hold the army together in their resilience.
00:31:13.000 And to gain their stories, I tapped in the great.
00:31:18.000 Oral history archive of the American Revolution that until Washington's immortals had ever hardly been touched.
00:31:26.000 And that was the pension application files that, if you were a surviving member of the Revolutionary War, you could go down under oath and swear to a judge what you saw and did.
00:31:38.000 And in some cases, these are the first person accounts and they can be very graphic of what these men saw and did.
00:31:45.000 And those are the stories that are imbued in the nonfiction that I write that, in many That many people have said reads like fiction, but there's over a thousand endnotes of primary sources that buttress the stories that are a band of brothers.
00:32:01.000 I wrote the first band of brothers, Washington's Immortals, on the American Revolution.
00:32:06.000 It's a very cohesive story about this small group of men through their personal agency, really changed the course of the war.
00:32:15.000 We talk about what was the greatest generation, and that World War II vet pointed back to the boys of 76 and 77.
00:32:23.000 What was it?
00:32:25.000 And I think this is good for modern Americans to look back on because, you know, we're not raised the same as they were there.
00:32:32.000 We're not all working the farms.
00:32:33.000 But, you know, what was it about them that set them apart in the whole sea of humanity and all of history?
00:32:41.000 What made them special?
00:32:43.000 What was imbued in their character that made them able to achieve so much?
00:32:48.000 Revolutionary snipers, in particular, kind of is a throwback to rugged individualism.
00:32:54.000 And what I mean by that is individuals that lived on the frontier.
00:33:00.000 And the frontier is the Appalachian Mountains and beyond.
00:33:03.000 Some of them lived illegally.
00:33:04.000 And they had to not only contend with hostile Native Americans, which were there to burn out their houses. 0.65
00:33:11.000 And many of these men, their families were executed by Native Americans.
00:33:16.000 And in some cases, they were Native Americans that were allied to the crown.
00:33:20.000 I mean, but the story has nuance where Native Americans also fought with us.
00:33:25.000 But it's that rugged individual dealing with the elements, dealing with massive uncertainty in their lives, but somehow.
00:33:32.000 They have to forge not only a life survival, but they forge a nation.
00:33:39.000 And it's this collective effort, this rugged individualism, this resilience, this belief in freedom and liberty, which is a time of the great kings and empires where you were swearing allegiance to the crown.
00:33:58.000 This is where subjects become citizens.
00:34:02.000 It's a very, very important time.
00:34:05.000 I think that is, I think what you just said.
00:34:07.000 And these are citizen soldiers.
00:34:09.000 I will note that too.
00:34:11.000 Yes, where subjects become citizens is a really powerful, transformative point in history.
00:34:18.000 And what a blessing of Providence that we as Americans are the inheritors of that point where we transform from subjects to citizens.
00:34:27.000 Blake, final thoughts.
00:34:29.000 I just want to make sure we shout out 14 books Washington's Immortals, The Indispensables, Revolutionary Snipers, but.
00:34:35.000 11 others.
00:34:36.000 He's got books on World War II and the Civil War, The Unvanquished, I know you mentioned there.
00:34:41.000 So, give Patrick's books a look.
00:34:45.000 What a wealth of knowledge.
00:34:46.000 A great way to celebrate our country on Memorial Day.
00:34:49.000 These are the guys who made it possible.
00:34:51.000 They're the ones who got through the times that try men's souls, as Thomas Paine put it.
00:34:56.000 So, Patrick, thank you for coming on the show today.
00:34:59.000 What a treat.
00:35:00.000 Happy Memorial Day to you.
00:35:01.000 It was an honor.
00:35:02.000 Thank you so much for having me on.
00:35:06.000 Here's what your financial advisor won't tell you.
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00:35:13.000 I get it.
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00:36:19.000 We talked a lot about this, and I'm going to detail why.
00:36:26.000 America is the greatest country in the history of the world.
00:36:28.000 First and foremost, it was the first country ever to be founded on an idea, not on a racial background, not on ethnocentrism, not on any sort of lineage, but an idea, an idea very simple.
00:36:39.000 An idea that we do not get our rights from government, but we get our rights naturally, whether it be from a creator or from God or from some supernatural being.
00:36:48.000 So, America is the greatest country in the world for a couple of reasons.
00:36:50.000 Number one, our diversity.
00:36:51.000 I'll talk about that.
00:36:52.000 Our economic power, our generosity, and our upward mobility.
00:36:55.000 This is the Charlie Kirk Show here on Memorial Day.
00:36:59.000 So happy Memorial Day to all of you.
00:37:02.000 I hope you are spending this day in gratitude for the gifts of Providence that have been bestowed upon the American people and the American Republic.
00:37:09.000 And in hour one, we spent a lot of time thinking about the revolution, the boys of 76 and 77.
00:37:16.000 And that was an awesome conversation.
00:37:17.000 And now we're going to kind of widen the aperture and think about some other sacrifices that great.
00:37:23.000 Americans have made throughout the years in different wars and different eras.
00:37:27.000 So, to help us do that is Dr. Mark Moyer, Hillsdale College.
00:37:31.000 He's the William P. Harris Chair of Military History.
00:37:35.000 Dr. Moyer, welcome to the show.
00:37:37.000 It's great to be with you.
00:37:39.000 So, this is the first time we've had you on the show, and it's an honor to have you.
00:37:43.000 And I said, Well, what does he specialize in?
00:37:45.000 You know, what era should we have?
00:37:47.000 He's like, He'll talk about anything.
00:37:48.000 He could talk about any of the military history, which is what a testament to you because there's a lot.
00:37:54.000 There's a lot.
00:37:55.000 But I think what would be most Fascinating because we, you know, you could do a whole hour on the Civil War.
00:38:01.000 You could talk a lot about that.
00:38:02.000 You could talk about 1812.
00:38:05.000 And there's been a lot of ink spilled, and it's a really fascinating history.
00:38:08.000 But why don't we advance our attention up and fast forward to the 20th century and what brings us up to now?
00:38:16.000 Because I know you've done a lot of work on the Vietnam War and the Korean War, but let's start this first segment on World War I and World War II, maybe some stories of sacrifice of the American story that are just unique to this country.
00:38:30.000 Yeah, well, World War I is a fascinating case.
00:38:34.000 It's something we don't tend to know as much about as Americans, although we should.
00:38:38.000 But it was a war that was fraught with controversy, both as America gets in and afterwards, which is worth remembering because, in fact, most of our wars have controversy of this sort.
00:38:52.000 But the American military really was not very well prepared.
00:38:58.000 And this is really a turning point in our history that we had thought we could be citizen soldiers and that we didn't need to have a large standing army.
00:39:06.000 So we send over an army.
00:39:08.000 That is really not well prepared for the war it's about to enter.
00:39:14.000 And so you have a lot of Americans suffering.
00:39:19.000 The initial plan for General Pershing was that we were going to break out of this trench warfare of which we're all too familiar, these horrific conditions, people spending years in these awful trenches.
00:39:33.000 And the Americans hope to get out of it, but ultimately we end up having to fight that conflict.
00:39:40.000 And it really is.
00:39:42.000 A bitter one that does have, it does certainly have its share of heroes.
00:39:46.000 The Americans do get there just in time to save the allied cause.
00:39:53.000 Yeah.
00:39:53.000 You know, that's a really fascinating dynamic that you just pinpointed.
00:39:57.000 You know, because citizen soldiers, this idea that we could not have a standing army.
00:40:03.000 And yet there was an isolationist streak in the U.S. that was very deep and very profound.
00:40:08.000 And yet we went off to go save Europe, which was a Tremendous sacrifice on so many levels.
00:40:15.000 Maybe I'm really curious about the American psyche at the time of entering World War I.
00:40:22.000 I mean, what kind of country were we?
00:40:24.000 And how controversial was it to send us in the first place when I mentioned this isolationist streak?
00:40:30.000 Yes, well, it's interesting because the country at the turn of the century has this resurgence of patriotism.
00:40:37.000 When the Spanish American War comes, you have a massive amount of volunteering.
00:40:42.000 And when World War I comes, you do still have.
00:40:45.000 Lots of volunteers, but that war certainly had some controversy.
00:40:48.000 You had Irish Americans, German Americans who weren't excited about fighting against their native countries, and a lot of people just asking, why does this fight concern us?
00:41:02.000 And Britain was blockading Germany, and so some American questions whether that was fair.
00:41:11.000 But there was certainly an enormous sense of patriotism.
00:41:15.000 You had Great faith in the nation and its ideals.
00:41:20.000 We didn't have any of the sort of questioning that we're going to see in about five decades or so within this country.
00:41:31.000 I think people, average Americans, wouldn't even understand what the war was about.
00:41:36.000 Historians argue about what the war was about.
00:41:39.000 And they found themselves asking that question very shortly after.
00:41:42.000 I think an interesting strain in American life is in the 1930s.
00:41:48.000 It was already very popular.
00:41:49.000 I asked, What did we achieve in that?
00:41:51.000 Because over 100,000 Americans died in that conflict.
00:41:55.000 And that's far less than World War II.
00:41:57.000 It's less than the Civil War, but it's a lot more than we lost in Vietnam, for example.
00:42:02.000 And if you looked around, yeah, we triumphed.
00:42:04.000 But Americans started to ask, What was the point of that?
00:42:07.000 And we do find ourselves asking that about a lot of wars ever since.
00:42:11.000 Yeah, in some ways, it was the prototype.
00:42:13.000 Yeah, that's correct.
00:42:14.000 There is this wave of isolationism.
00:42:17.000 A lot of people look back and say, Did we really fight this for the wrong reasons?
00:42:23.000 And there was some truth to the fact that British propagandists were exaggerating what the Germans were saying.
00:42:30.000 And there were other arguments that somehow the munitions industry pulled us in.
00:42:35.000 But we have these series of neutrality acts passed in the 1930s because of this general unease and this idea that we got sucked into a war that we didn't necessarily need to.
00:42:46.000 And 100,000 Americans is an enormous price to pay.
00:42:50.000 And of course, there's no better time to remember that than on Memorial Day.
00:42:54.000 Yeah.
00:42:56.000 What was the, I guess, you got to talk about these neutrality acts, but I think about the post war.
00:43:03.000 Great war era, and you take us into the booming 20s, right?
00:43:08.000 You had a massive economic growth.
00:43:11.000 The country industrializes.
00:43:12.000 What were the big lessons learned, I guess, and what were the ramifications of that war?
00:43:18.000 Well, for a lot of Americans, there was this sense that we didn't really want to get outside our hemisphere.
00:43:26.000 We should stay here.
00:43:27.000 The Europeans, of course, have been warring for centuries. 0.57
00:43:31.000 And Warren Harding promised to return.
00:43:35.000 To normalcy, that we were going to get back to our domestic affairs and not go crusading around the world.
00:43:41.000 And there was also a general sense that Woodrow Wilson had gone too far with his idealism and his talk about how we have to make the world safe for democracy and put other countries' interests on a par with ours.
00:43:56.000 And you had people returning to the notion that, yeah, we like the rest of the world, but this is our country and its interests come first.
00:44:05.000 Man, it's occurring to me now just how this would echo, as you said, five decades later, but even now, how much foreign affairs like this can really challenge a domestic population of like, when is it worth it?
00:44:22.000 When is it worth putting American lives on the line, lives and treasure?
00:44:27.000 I find it oddly comforting to know that other generations have wrestled so greatly with this question.
00:44:34.000 So let's fast forward.
00:44:35.000 Now we're at World War II.
00:44:38.000 How big of a mobilization in the history of the United States did this represent?
00:44:44.000 And you talk about controversy with World War I. How controversial was getting into World War II?
00:44:51.000 Yes, there are great questions.
00:44:52.000 And we talked before about some of the things people learned.
00:44:56.000 One of the biggest problems we had after the war was there was this notion that we had fought the war to end all wars.
00:45:05.000 Now we're going to disarm because weapons cause war.
00:45:08.000 And so we have these disarmament efforts.
00:45:11.000 But it turns out the bad guys don't always play by the rules.
00:45:15.000 And so Germany and Japan start rearming, and the United States and other countries are late in coming to the game.
00:45:25.000 And so just barely is Franklin Roosevelt able to start mobilizing.
00:45:31.000 And that's not really until after the fall of France in May of 1940.
00:45:35.000 And the economy really won't get on a war footing until after Pearl Harbor.
00:45:40.000 But once it happens, of course, it will be the biggest military buildup.
00:45:46.000 In world history, 12 million Americans going, a lot of them volunteered, a lot of them drafted as well.
00:45:55.000 And that does have implications because when you have a smaller war, you can rely on a lot of volunteers.
00:46:00.000 But now we are really digging into the population in a great way.
00:46:07.000 And so that's partly why we think of this generation as the greatest generation because so many of them went on to serve in the war.
00:46:16.000 One thing that this points to World War I, World War II, we went into both conflicts with a pretty small military that we massively expanded.
00:46:24.000 Ever since World War II, we've never really had a small military ever since.
00:46:29.000 We sort of permanently have a large one.
00:46:32.000 We do draft a large army again for Korea, for Vietnam, but after that, we go to the all volunteer military.
00:46:39.000 This is getting a little more philosophical and abstract.
00:46:42.000 Did America's identity change at all from that shift towards having a significant standing army that is professional and all volunteer as opposed to a small army of Conventional, often drafted citizen soldiers?
00:47:00.000 Yeah, that's an excellent question, too.
00:47:01.000 And, you know, there is certainly with World War II, we're going to have a military on an unprecedented scale.
00:47:06.000 But there is, after World War II, a huge demobilization effort.
00:47:11.000 And you go from about 12 million to, I think, 600,000 very quickly.
00:47:16.000 And so the country actually will be very unprepared for the Korean War.
00:47:21.000 And you get to the Korean War, there's the case of Task Force Smith, which was sent to try to stop the North Koreans. 0.83
00:47:30.000 In the early stages, and they lack equipment and lack suitable leadership. 0.96
00:47:34.000 And so this becomes the rallying cry for those who think we need greater readiness, that we want no more task force smiths. 0.70
00:47:43.000 And so it's really from that point on, I think you've got this really greater conviction that we, given our new position in the world, simply cannot afford to wait until war comes to prepare for war.
00:47:56.000 That's fascinating.
00:47:57.000 And the identity, though, to drill deeper in that, you know.
00:48:02.000 This idea that we now inhabited this position in the world, that we had to sort of police it.
00:48:09.000 You think back to Eisenhower, though, and he's warning about the military industrial complex.
00:48:15.000 This idea of national identity, though, did it shift in World War II?
00:48:19.000 Was it the after war propaganda, the films that glorified these brave men and women, the fights?
00:48:25.000 Is that all that kind of contributed to it, or was it the war itself?
00:48:30.000 The war, I think, certainly had a very strongly unifying effect, and you had a lot of recent.
00:48:36.000 Immigrant groups into the country being pulled together, people from different parts of the country.
00:48:42.000 So I think it had a unifying and generally positive effect on the country.
00:48:47.000 Now, when you get to this question of the military industrial complex, that is a trickier one. 0.53
00:48:55.000 And as I said, I think Americans were hoping we were going to have this peace dividend after the war, and there were expectations the Soviets were going to play nice. 0.69
00:49:04.000 But it turned out the Soviets. 0.61
00:49:07.000 Had a pernicious ideology that was bent on world domination. 0.85
00:49:10.000 So we had to counter that.
00:49:12.000 But I think Eisenhower realized by the end of his second term that in doing so, we were building this massive defense establishment.
00:49:23.000 And that when you build something that big, it can be a threat to liberty, especially when it gets involved in politics.
00:49:33.000 We see this more recently if you look at the tech giants and how people are concerned about their influence over politics.
00:49:41.000 But he certainly recognized there was this peril, as did a lot of other Americans.
00:49:47.000 But at the same time, you have these challenges to deal with.
00:49:49.000 So it's a very difficult question.
00:49:51.000 Yeah, it's interesting, too.
00:49:52.000 You said 12 million people were mobilized during World War II.
00:49:56.000 The U.S. population in 1940 from the census was that we had 132 million.
00:50:03.000 So you're basically looking at about 10% of the entire population was activated specifically to go fight and put on a uniform.
00:50:14.000 Which is wild to think about.
00:50:16.000 Wild.
00:50:17.000 I mean, we all know somebody in the military now, but like 10% of the entire population being mobilized for that.
00:50:23.000 And then everybody back home, Rosie the Riveters, and everybody throwing in for the war effort.
00:50:27.000 Like, I just don't think.
00:50:29.000 There's just no level.
00:50:30.000 We've never since had that sort of all consuming mobilization of the country before.
00:50:35.000 We were fighting to win.
00:50:36.000 And it's worth asking.
00:50:37.000 You know, we mentioned how the country changed.
00:50:40.000 And one of those things you think is could we do it today?
00:50:43.000 If we somehow got in a conflict with China, would we be able to come out and say, Everyone's got to mobilize.
00:50:49.000 We need to take 10% of people into government service. 0.75
00:50:54.000 Would people be up for it?
00:50:55.000 Would our current bureaucracy be able to manage it?
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00:52:06.000 Let's fast forward to Vietnam.
00:52:09.000 You know, our modern imaginations have seen all the videos and, you know, all the movies.
00:52:15.000 But this was like a war unlike any other.
00:52:18.000 Maybe you could say that about World War II, certainly World War I, but this changed America forever.
00:52:25.000 Just set the backdrop of what made it extraordinary and why was it so controversial?
00:52:30.000 Yes, it is, I think, our most misunderstood war, which is why I've spent so much time looking at it.
00:52:38.000 But when it starts out in the 50s with an American commitment to South Vietnam, there is broad bipartisan support for helping South Vietnam as part of the containment policy.
00:52:51.000 We have set up a series of anti communist allies in Asia, fought the Korean War to.
00:52:59.000 Save South Korea, we're supporting Taiwan, Japan.
00:53:04.000 And so there is general consensus that Asia is a critical part of the world and we need allies there.
00:53:12.000 And so it doesn't really get controversial until 1964.
00:53:19.000 And really, some of the controversy starts in 1963.
00:53:23.000 There's this disastrous coup that we support, which is a huge mistake.
00:53:27.000 But then President Kennedy himself is assassinated just after that.
00:53:31.000 And so You have Lyndon Johnson coming in, and he is really focused on his reelection.
00:53:39.000 And well, this will come back to haunt him because he talks about how he's not sending American boys to Vietnam.
00:53:45.000 And then after he's elected, he will send American boys to Vietnam.
00:53:50.000 But I think the rationale in terms of protecting the region from communist influence has stood the time very well.
00:54:00.000 In the region we have today, anti communist allies, I think you can make the case that we actually saved many of those allies, but what we did in Vietnam, but the war itself was fought in an unfortunate way in many respects. 0.64
00:54:17.000 And so a lot of the disillusionment comes with the fact that the Johnson administration tried what was called gradual escalation, where we thought we would slowly increase the pressure on North Vietnam, but it ended up just playing into their hands. 0.81
00:54:31.000 But when Nixon comes in, You know, it's been a war for the Democrats, and Nixon could have thrown up his hands and walked away, but he said, No, this is still in our national interest, which I think he deserves a lot of credit for. 0.71
00:54:43.000 But a lot of the opposition that comes out too is connected to, I think, the baby boom. 0.56
00:54:49.000 And you have a lot of people who aren't really that focused on Vietnam, but they want to criticize their own country. 0.71
00:54:56.000 And so Vietnam becomes a convenient whipping boy. 0.78
00:55:00.000 That's interesting. 1.00
00:55:01.000 And it's very possible you're right.
00:55:02.000 There was a lot of social turmoil and change in America while this was unfolding. 0.87
00:55:08.000 But Do you think there's an unfortunate template that got set with Vietnam? 0.92
00:55:13.000 You mentioned they tried gradual escalation.
00:55:15.000 And what stands out to me about that is, did America gradually escalate any other war we fought?
00:55:21.000 I don't think Lincoln tried gradual escalation in the Civil War.
00:55:25.000 I don't think FDR was doing anything like that with World War II.
00:55:28.000 No, you just hyper mobilized to win the war.
00:55:32.000 And once the war was done, you rapidly demobilized.
00:55:35.000 And suddenly you have this almost, it's like war as a management consultant would come up with it, which.
00:55:41.000 A lot of the guys who ran that war, Robert McNamara, I think he literally was a consultant beforehand or kind of that type of person he worked at, Ford Motors.
00:55:51.000 Did we get sort of caught in the wrong loop where we started to treat conflicts as a thing to be managed that you could calibrate, you could half fight a war?
00:56:01.000 And we've been doing that ever since.
00:56:02.000 Exactly.
00:56:03.000 We sort of had half fighting the war with Iraq, half fighting the Afghan war.
00:56:06.000 You get these wars where you can't easily define what you're actually trying to achieve.
00:56:11.000 You don't know what victory looks like.
00:56:13.000 We didn't know that with Vietnam. 0.70
00:56:14.000 And we had that same issue with wars we fought since.
00:56:17.000 Do you think America got stuck in some sort of doom loop there?
00:56:20.000 Yes.
00:56:20.000 And in 64 and 65, there are these sharp debates where you have the military, and these are generals who had fought in World War II in Korea, and they're saying, okay, if we're going to fight here, we're going to give them everything we've got and we're going to hit them hard right away.
00:56:35.000 But you had McNamara pushing back on that.
00:56:39.000 And one of the most sort of pathetic aspects of all this is that McNamara was very influenced by academic.
00:56:47.000 Theorists who were using game theory and these other abstractions to try to come up with some new ways to manage conflict. 0.57
00:56:56.000 And it just turned out to be a complete disaster.
00:57:00.000 But yeah, he came from the business world and he had a strong arrogance.
00:57:07.000 He was also an intellectual who thought that these abstract theories had some place in the world.
00:57:13.000 But it turned out human nature hasn't actually changed and the ways you fight wars really shouldn't change either.
00:57:21.000 How did it change America?
00:57:23.000 You know, and because again, I have in my childhood and growing up, I mean, from Forrest Gump onward, you know, you get so much Vietnam era content that's been created, and it feels all very depressing. 0.65
00:57:38.000 And you think about the backdrop of it, you had racial tension and the riots, Watts riots in the 60s, and then you had this basic malaise that started setting in in the 70s.
00:57:51.000 How did it change the identity of America and the way we felt about ourselves?
00:57:58.000 Yes, well, it was the first war where you had a significant part of the population actively disparaging military service.
00:58:06.000 Now, in other wars, you'd had plenty of people dodging the draft, but this time you had the baby boomers claiming that, in fact, they were the real heroes because they didn't go to this war, which they thought was immoral.
00:58:21.000 They didn't have a great case for that.
00:58:23.000 And so this spills over into what follows in a lot of the media depictions.
00:58:28.000 I think one of the worst things that happens in the Vietnam War is that.
00:58:32.000 A lot of these people end up putting the blame on veterans, and veterans are treated horrifically after the war.
00:58:40.000 Eventually, the left kind of figured this out.
00:58:42.000 And so, in later conflicts, you don't have this same vilification.
00:58:47.000 And I think it probably makes sense.
00:58:49.000 Everyone needs to know that it's the politicians who actually make these decisions about war and not the troops.
00:58:55.000 But you've had this general, I think ever since that time, you've seen much of the left side of the political spectrum has been hostile to the military.
00:59:05.000 And I think that's also.
00:59:06.000 You know, been a problem in terms of maintaining national unity when you have so many people who are disparaging this important institution.
00:59:15.000 So, you mentioned the baby boomers were different in the sense that they were prepared to disparage the war effort.
00:59:22.000 What made the baby boomers disparage it? 0.55
00:59:24.000 Was it the fact they were getting drafted? 0.82
00:59:26.000 Was it the mission itself? 0.94
00:59:28.000 Was it the idea that you're not killing other white Europeans, but these are Vietnamese in the jungles?
00:59:36.000 Like, what was the central kernel that drove such controversy?
00:59:40.000 Well, I think actually it was fundamentally about their own self preservation.
00:59:47.000 Now, they tried to dress it up in more idealistic terms, but you've got to remember this was the most, the generation that had grown up in the greatest degree of affluence.
00:59:57.000 And I think they were rightly characterized by some of their elders as saying this is a generation of spoiled brats.
01:00:04.000 They've had too much given to them.
01:00:07.000 And now, as we know, spoiled brats tend not to want to make sacrifices.
01:00:12.000 And do hard things.
01:00:14.000 And so that was really driving it.
01:00:16.000 And you can see this too, because when the draft ends, most of the opposition to the war goes away.
01:00:23.000 And so you had these young people who were self absorbed and they thought they were so important that they didn't want to risk their lives in some faraway conflict.
01:00:33.000 So, Dr. Moyer, is your perspective that the aims and ambitions of the war effort were noble?
01:00:42.000 Were they rightly placed or was it a miscalculation?
01:00:45.000 I think it's the. 0.54
01:00:47.000 The fundamental objective of containing communism in Asia was spot on. 0.58
01:00:52.000 And again, we can see the consequences still today. 0.53
01:00:55.000 China's no longer really communist, but they are still our number one threat. 0.98
01:01:00.000 And so we've sustained these alliances.
01:01:02.000 Asia's economy is hugely important.
01:01:06.000 And by making a stand there, we bought time for our allies to stay.
01:01:11.000 Now, it was disastrous the way we left them in 1975, which was the Congress being petulant and upset at Nixon.
01:01:21.000 Partly over Watergate. 1.00
01:01:23.000 But I think it was tremendously unfortunate, although we have benefited from the fact that we've got so many great Vietnamese who've come to this country. 1.00
01:01:33.000 Our current acting secretary of the Navy is actually a child of Vietnamese who came here. 1.00
01:01:41.000 But you've also got to remember we were fighting against an ideology that killed 100 million people worldwide. 0.94
01:01:47.000 That's international communism.
01:01:48.000 And they killed more than fascism, but a lot of people don't.
01:01:52.000 Talk about that, but that I think has to be at the center of the conversation.
01:01:56.000 Yeah, I mean, gosh, that's it's you're saying these things, and I think that they are, uh, for example, Korea, South Korea is a thriving country now, unlike North Korea, because of the sacrifices of the Korean War.
01:02:13.000 You know, uh, that was a bit of a stalemate.
01:02:16.000 It's the in retrospect history has not judged it as a full win, right?
01:02:20.000 You know, um, but I think it was a win. 0.94
01:02:23.000 Uh, Vietnam. 0.91
01:02:25.000 It feels a little murkier to me, but you're giving me something to think about. 1.00
01:02:29.000 And yeah, I mean, listen, the baby boomers, they get mad at me on this show and they got mad at Charlie a lot, but I think there's some truth. 0.98
01:02:36.000 I mean, listen, if you grow up with the war dividend and this massive amount of wealth and this optimism, and then all of a sudden you get drawn down back into sort of a foreign conflict and a war overseas, yeah, I think they had a good point. 0.84
01:02:50.000 You know, you don't want to go have to fight a war in far flung places, but was the overall objective noble?
01:02:56.000 You know, to stop communism.
01:02:58.000 It's tough to argue your point there, Doctor.
01:03:00.000 All right.
01:03:01.000 Blake, we were having a conversation, and Dr. Moyer, I wonder if you would agree with it.
01:03:05.000 But you were saying, as you wrestle through Vietnam.
01:03:09.000 I just think about with Vietnam, what made me so sad about it is if you look at the people who signed up to go fight for that war, there were draftees, but there were many volunteers.
01:03:19.000 And it was one of the actually a great generation of Americans who were incredibly patriotic, incredibly pro America, incredibly anti communist, wanted to serve their country, and they had.
01:03:31.000 A leadership of this country that told them this is crucial for America's security.
01:03:35.000 This is a war that is as important as anything we've ever fought, and we have a plan to win this.
01:03:42.000 And it feels like a huge tragedy to me in that I feel that a lot of those men who went and many of them died were kind of lied to.
01:03:50.000 They were lied to both about the nature of the war itself, but also, especially, having a plan that we had leaders.
01:03:58.000 This is the first big case of us getting into a war where we didn't have a clear cut idea of how to win it.
01:04:05.000 And even after it was clear they didn't have that idea, that the war was sort of perpetuated because it had inertia to it.
01:04:12.000 Like it would be politically costly to back out.
01:04:15.000 You were pot committed.
01:04:16.000 Yeah, I think about that.
01:04:17.000 It's similar with like Afghanistan, for example, where you have U.S. troops continuing to die because Lindsey Graham has decided, I am a tough war on terror guy, and that means this war must continue.
01:04:32.000 Yeah.
01:04:32.000 I'm curious about that, Dr. Moyer, because.
01:04:37.000 Vietnam was the politicians leading it were World War II vets, right?
01:04:42.000 They had fought in this triumphant war.
01:04:46.000 Was the approach this like gradual escalation?
01:04:48.000 Were they trying to adjust for the traumas of World War II?
01:04:52.000 I mean, were they trying to avoid some of that?
01:04:55.000 Where does that come from when you were so triumphant and so victorious that you would then go and lead men to battle in this kind of haphazard way?
01:05:07.000 Limiting the war and gradual escalation comes mainly from McNamara, and he pushes it with Johnson, who was barely at all in World War II.
01:05:16.000 I mean, he's in it for a brief moment, and he flies an airplane once and tries to make it into a big deal.
01:05:22.000 But they are sort of petrified of nuclear war.
01:05:26.000 Now, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are coming up with some alternative strategies, which actually I think would have won the war.
01:05:34.000 One is to invade North Vietnam, one is to go into Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 0.56
01:05:40.000 Want us to step up the bombing of North Vietnam.
01:05:42.000 And they kept recommending these things. 0.99
01:05:44.000 And Johnson and McNamara kept saying, oh, no, we can't do that because we're going to bring the Chinese and the Soviets in. 0.77
01:05:51.000 Now, Richard Nixon will end up doing some of those things, and it turns out the Chinese and the Soviets sat on their hands. 0.88
01:05:58.000 So there's this terrible miscalculation, and things are going better in the end. 0.83
01:06:03.000 And had it not been for Watergate, I think the South would have held on.
01:06:07.000 But one of the most important things to know about Vietnam veterans is that by large majorities, they believe that the main problem in Vietnam was that the politicians would not let the military.
01:06:22.000 Win the war, which is something you don't hear the mainstream media and movie and so forth.
01:06:28.000 They don't want you to get that message.
01:06:30.000 They want to say that this was some unwinnable conflict.
01:06:35.000 But as someone who spent decades looking at this, I can say that that's definitely not the case.
01:06:41.000 There were strategies that would have succeeded had we not been so petrified of what the Chinese or the Soviets might think.
01:06:50.000 You know, that's a great place to end it because it takes us kind of up into our present moment where President Trump has said.
01:06:57.000 Hey, the war on terror, you saw this in Trump 1.0, where he unshackled the US military to really achieve objectives, to use the full force and might of the US military.
01:07:08.000 It seems like, you know, we've almost come out of this really bad, you know, I would say it's like 50 years of kind of really tough lessons.
01:07:19.000 Do you predict that we've learned our lessons from this era?
01:07:22.000 I mean, because we have the bravest men and women, the most awesome military on the planet.
01:07:28.000 But we also don't want to fight dumb wars, right? 1.00
01:07:30.000 We don't want to keep this foreign adventurism. 1.00
01:07:33.000 I guess in the final minute and a half, two minutes we have here, have we learned our lessons? 1.00
01:07:37.000 Are we in a better place now?
01:07:39.000 Well, I think this country is not always one of our fortes of learning the right lessons.
01:07:46.000 Of course, there's a lot of lessons you can learn from history.
01:07:48.000 And one of the big problems you have is that sometimes we try to apply the lesson of one place in another.
01:07:55.000 And so when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of people who supported those were saying, well, we can.
01:08:01.000 We can democratize these places because it worked in other countries.
01:08:04.000 Well, it turns out Iraq and Afghanistan are Islamic states with different cultures. 1.00
01:08:09.000 I think that is the biggest reason why we failed in those places. 1.00
01:08:14.000 Now, I do think we've learned, if you look at what people say about Iran now, I think we recognize, well, we've now tried in Iraq and Afghanistan to turn them into democracies. 0.99
01:08:26.000 Didn't work.
01:08:27.000 And so probably doesn't make a lot of sense to send hundreds of thousands of troops into Iran.
01:08:32.000 And try the same thing.
01:08:33.000 Yeah.
01:08:34.000 I mean, we could disagree till we're blue in the face about Iran, or you could agree with it, but boots on the ground in a nation of 90 million with sectarian splits and a deeply ingrained regime. 0.51
01:08:49.000 You know, thankfully we're not doing that. 0.71
01:08:51.000 And hopefully we won't ever have to do that.
01:08:53.000 Dr. Moore, it's been a pleasure.
01:08:55.000 What a breadth of knowledge you possess.
01:08:57.000 I literally didn't, I didn't even tell the folks that we were working to.
01:09:01.000 Coordinate this, how we were going to do it.
01:09:03.000 And I was just told you could, and boy, could you.
01:09:06.000 So, hats off to you.
01:09:07.000 Thank you for joining us on this Memorial Day special.
01:09:11.000 We pray that you have gratitude for what the men and women have done to preserve this nation.
01:09:15.000 And thank you for joining us today.
01:09:18.000 Thanks.
01:09:18.000 Great to be with you guys.
01:09:19.000 Yeah, Hillsdale College is the best.
01:09:21.000 We love those guys.
01:09:22.000 Happy Memorial Day.
01:09:23.000 Be grateful for the sacrifice that was made on your behalf to enjoy the greatest country in the history of the world.
01:09:33.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.