The Charlie Kirk Show - Tucker Carlson | What Really Matters

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:01.000 Super special episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:03.000 The legendary Tucker Carlson is here.

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00:01:01.000 Without any further ado, a pretty legendary conversation with the legend himself, Tucker Carlson.

00:01:08.000 Buckle up.

00:01:09.000 Here we go.

00:01:10.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:12.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:14.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:17.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:20.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:22.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:23.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:01:24.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:01:30.000 Turning point USA.

00:01:31.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:40.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:43.000 Hey, everybody.

00:01:44.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:46.000 Tucker, welcome to the Charlie Show.

00:01:47.000 Thanks for having me.

00:01:48.000 I wanted to start by saying, I think it was two years ago you were here last.

00:01:51.000 Yes.

00:01:52.000 And I made a conversation.

00:01:55.000 I made a mistake, I should say, to say I wanted to talk with you on stage about all these different topics and issues.

00:02:00.000 And I wanted to start by just saying you have had more impact on the way I view the news cycle and how I view what's happening in our country than anyone else.

00:02:08.000 Thank you.

00:02:09.000 It's an amazing honor to have you on this program.

00:02:11.000 I'm honored to be here.

00:02:12.000 So you and I were kind of talking before this about what's really happening in this country.

00:02:17.000 And I think one of the most important shows you did recently was on a Friday evening, about a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, when you talked about inflation and what it means for normal people in our country.

00:02:28.000 We talk about this a lot on our podcasts and our program, that the creation of money, it's not a mistake, it's a tactic that is actually being used to try and temporarily satisfy our addiction to debt.

00:02:39.000 Can you talk a little bit about that?

00:02:42.000 Well, it's interesting.

00:02:42.000 I'm not an, obviously, I'm a talk show host, not an economist.

00:02:46.000 And so I was a little slow to pick up on this.

00:02:49.000 But if you take three steps back and take the kind of big picture view, it becomes clear what's going on.

00:02:55.000 So obviously, if you devalue a currency by printing too much of it, its value will fall, right?

00:03:04.000 So our Fed policy abets inflation.

00:03:09.000 That's accelerated dramatically because of modern monetary theory, which is the idea that you can basically, with no real consequences, ignore your balance sheet and just continue to print money.

00:03:22.000 And I've always thought it was a weird theory, a bizarre theory, until recently when I realized that, yes, it will cause inflation.

00:03:30.000 The people pushing it know that, and they're doing it because they're going to benefit from it.

00:03:35.000 So I would think of it this way.

00:03:37.000 If you borrow $100,000 from the bank and you don't pay it back, they take your house away.

00:03:41.000 If you borrow $100 million from the bank and you don't pay it back, they call you and say, let's have lunch.

00:03:46.000 Because at that point, the balance of power has changed, right?

00:03:50.000 So at a certain point, well, that's exactly right, because you take the institution with you.

00:03:54.000 So Under this current system, the richest people are the ones whose wealth derives from debt.

00:04:03.000 And so this policy, almost by definition, is going to help them.

00:04:07.000 And in fact, it is for a very simple and obvious reason.

00:04:10.000 Inflation helps people who owe money because if the value of the money falls, so does the cost of repaying it.

00:04:18.000 Our entire economy is basically built on debt.

00:04:20.000 Right.

00:04:21.000 So who does this screw?

00:04:23.000 Who does it disadvantage?

00:04:26.000 It disadvantages anybody who has followed the rules as were laid out at the beginning of time, which is, you know, be responsible with your money.

00:04:34.000 Don't buy things you can't afford.

00:04:36.000 Save.

00:04:37.000 The people who followed those instructions have been hurt by our monetary policy, and they're about to get a lot more hurt because the value of the money they saved will decline.

00:04:47.000 Whereas the people who are living entirely on credit, and I don't mean the guy who bought the extra bass boat, I mean the guy, you know, who's really, whose whole business is leverage, those people will benefit.

00:04:58.000 And that's a small group relative to the first group.

00:05:00.000 So anyone living on fixed income, anyone living on savings, those people are about to get a lot poorer.

00:05:05.000 The people who are facing insurmountable debt will ultimately find it surmountable because of inflation.

00:05:10.000 So like it's, it's not that complex, really.

00:05:13.000 Well, but what I have found so interesting is that you're one of the only people talking about this.

00:05:17.000 And it might be one of the biggest thing actually.

00:05:19.000 I think it's super interesting.

00:05:21.000 And it's interesting.

00:05:21.000 It's also, it impacts every single kind of facet of life.

00:05:26.000 You were warning years ago, and I didn't take this seriously, honestly, when you said this a couple years ago, that a small group of people are getting way too powerful.

00:05:36.000 They're getting rich at other people's expense.

00:05:38.000 And now we have seen this year, Jeff Bezos is wealthier than any other person ever to exist in the history of the planet, nearing $200 billion.

00:05:45.000 We have seen the billionaires have had a great year.

00:05:48.000 Yes.

00:05:49.000 Like the best year ever.

00:05:50.000 And you've been warning against this, and it seems as if it's only intensified in this last calendar year.

00:05:55.000 And inflation actually benefits those people, of course.

00:05:59.000 They're only going to get wealthier.

00:06:00.000 They can actually afford to buy hedges against what inflation will actually mean when we have 6% or 7% inflation.

00:06:06.000 And I think we already have inflation.

00:06:08.000 I just think the way we calculate it is completely total not.

00:06:11.000 I mean, the things that actually matter to you, your house, tuition for your kids, food, you know, the big expenditures.

00:06:19.000 Healthcare.

00:06:20.000 Healthcare.

00:06:20.000 And needless to say, thank you, healthcare.

00:06:23.000 Those things are becoming way more expensive.

00:06:28.000 In fact, way outpacing the so-called inflation rate.

00:06:30.000 So yeah, it tells you everything.

00:06:33.000 I would say the theme for the year is the big have benefited, the smaller being crushed.

00:06:39.000 I mean, that really is true.

00:06:41.000 On every level, from the sort of micro level, downtown Chicago, independent businesses are going under, big national, international retailers are managing to hang in there.

00:06:55.000 Amazon is thriving.

00:06:57.000 Independent booksellers are gone, right?

00:06:59.000 All the way up to the geopolitical level.

00:07:02.000 What nation is pulling ahead of all others?

00:07:05.000 The world's biggest nation, China.

00:07:07.000 So that really is kind of the lesson that in a moment of tumult and reordering, only the big are benefiting from this. 0.76

00:07:17.000 And it's scary, actually.

00:07:19.000 You know, like, what do you do in the face of that?

00:07:22.000 So we do have some things we can do.

00:07:24.000 And you're calling early for a breakup of the tech companies.

00:07:27.000 Yes.

00:07:28.000 And it seems as if this is actually gaining steam.

00:07:30.000 Yes.

00:07:31.000 Whereas a couple years ago, people would say, why would we need to break up these wonderful companies that are just doing such a great job for us?

00:07:37.000 And we just start with the surveillance capitalism companies, right?

00:07:40.000 Which are basically data companies who spy on all of us and we are the product.

00:07:44.000 Google and Facebook.

00:07:45.000 Yes.

00:07:46.000 And they have become so incredibly wealthy and powerful that they basically are the government.

00:07:52.000 They're more powerful than our own government.

00:07:54.000 Of course they are.

00:07:55.000 Not accountable.

00:07:56.000 Not at all.

00:07:57.000 Right.

00:07:57.000 And vote them out.

00:07:58.000 We don't have a Bill of Rights.

00:07:59.000 We don't have any way.

00:08:01.000 So, for example, this conversation we're having right now, and we put it up on YouTube, if we say something wrong or so that some guy in pajamas and Menlo Park doesn't like and they just make it disappear, I have no recourse I can take over at all.

00:08:14.000 And so you're at complete and total mercy of these tech companies.

00:08:17.000 Can you talk about kind of how big of a threat they actually pose?

00:08:20.000 And it's the most basic of all threats.

00:08:24.000 I mean, having control over information kind of makes the difference at every level over time.

00:08:33.000 So if you don't know about something, if you don't have the capacity to understand something, even to think about something, then, you know, I can control you, right?

00:08:42.000 I mean, that's why the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects the press because power over information is that central.

00:08:50.000 And Google is the most powerful company in the history of the world.

00:08:54.000 There's never been a company as well.

00:08:55.000 Way more powerful than Standard Oil ever.

00:08:56.000 Way more powerful than the U.S. government.

00:08:58.000 So, yeah, look, we should declare war on bigness without getting into the rat hole of the details where I spend my life, but I would say we should be philosophically opposed to concentrations of wealth and power this profound.

00:09:13.000 The fact that Google is as big and powerful as it is, same with Facebook, is itself an argument against Google and Facebook.

00:09:20.000 Like, it's just too much.

00:09:22.000 We should be against big countries.

00:09:24.000 This country is 350 million people.

00:09:26.000 It shouldn't get any bigger, right?

00:09:28.000 I mean, and at the same time, we should turn our attention to what really matters, which are the small things, like your own life, which we've all put on hold for the sake of these macro questions.

00:09:38.000 I mean, one of the problems with an election year is everyone thinks in national or global terms, like in terms of trends and whatever.

00:09:45.000 And it's very easy to forget that what actually matters and what you will contemplate on your deathbed is how you ordered your own life.

00:09:51.000 Are you married?

00:09:51.000 Do you have descendants?

00:09:53.000 Does anyone care that you're dying?

00:09:55.000 Like, these are the most basic questions, and they've been completely ignored.

00:09:58.000 So, my advice to anybody, to my own, I have a ton of children, and I always tell them this.

00:10:03.000 All that matters is whether you get married, have a successful marriage, and have children, and behave honorably.

00:10:10.000 Like, that's it.

00:10:11.000 That's all that matters.

00:10:12.000 That's the most kind of micro concern you can have, and yet it's the most profound.

00:10:18.000 So, I think if you're a whatever it is, you know, whatever the category is, conservative, you know, traditional, liberal, libertarian, or anybody who's not fully with the current program, your main concern ought to be, you know, do I have a happy personal life?

00:10:34.000 Am I connected to someone for life?

00:10:36.000 Am I having children?

00:10:38.000 Do I have any sense of what happens when I die?

00:10:40.000 Like, don't neglect those things.

00:10:43.000 And so, do you think I completely agree, but it seems as if the Republican Party is doing their best not to embrace that?

00:10:49.000 And so, they're just pure corporate shills.

00:10:51.000 I mean, their values are the values of corporate America.

00:10:54.000 I mean, one of the my challenges, I hope in 2021 is to clean up my vocabulary, sweep away the words that are not precisely descriptive and, in fact, counterproductive.

00:11:05.000 And one of them is left and liberal, right and conservative.

00:11:08.000 I mean, those terms just, they had a great deal of meaning when I was growing up during the Cold War.

00:11:13.000 It was a war between left and right, collectivist versus freedom, you know, market capitalism versus communism.

00:11:19.000 No, what we're fighting now is man versus the behemoth.

00:11:23.000 It's the individual versus corporate power, period.

00:11:26.000 And almost everything that I find repulsive about modern American society, starting and beginning with the pollution and distortion of gender roles and abortion, which are the things I find most destructive because it's tampering with the very formula, with the recipe for a successful civilization.

00:11:41.000 Where does that come from?

00:11:43.000 It doesn't come from the left.

00:11:45.000 It doesn't come from, who's that guy they're always quoting who wrote the book, Rules for Radicals?

00:11:49.000 Solinsky, whatever.

00:11:50.000 He didn't think this up.

00:11:51.000 This is being promoted by big corporations who see human beings as widgets and see human relationships as impediment to corporate success.

00:12:00.000 So, like, why do you think big business funds BLM and Planned Parenthood?

00:12:04.000 BLM calling for the destruction of the nuclear family.

00:12:06.000 What's that about? 0.98

00:12:07.000 What does that have to do with black empowerment?

00:12:08.000 Actually, it doesn't empower any individual.

00:12:11.000 The family is the definition of empowerment.

00:12:13.000 When things go to, where do you go?

00:12:15.000 Your family.

00:12:16.000 I have got my kids living with me right now because American society is collapsing.

00:12:19.000 It's like the greatest thing that's ever happened.

00:12:21.000 They all come home.

00:12:23.000 The family is the fortress against the world.

00:12:25.000 That's true.

00:12:26.000 So if you want to empower people, you strengthen their families.

00:12:29.000 Why are they trying to disempower our families?

00:12:32.000 Because families get in the way of obedience to the corporation. 1.00

00:12:36.000 So a lot of big corporations are offering for free to freeze the eggs of their female employees. 0.76

00:12:42.000 What does that tell you?

00:12:43.000 Is that compassion?

00:12:44.000 No.

00:12:44.000 What they're saying is, give up your child bearing years for us.

00:12:49.000 By the way, we have no loyalty.

00:12:50.000 We don't care about you at all in exchange for the promise that maybe someday you can have a personal life.

00:12:57.000 It's so dystopian.

00:12:59.000 It's so grotesque.

00:13:00.000 Saul Linsky didn't think that up.

00:13:02.000 Apple did.

00:13:04.000 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:13:05.000 So the real threat that we face now, I mean, the left, I'm not, you know, I don't like the left, and I've spent my whole life arguing against the left, but I know the left.

00:13:15.000 I know, you know, because I grew up with them.

00:13:18.000 They don't make their beds, okay?

00:13:19.000 They're disorganized people.

00:13:22.000 They couldn't pull off a five-year-old's birthday party.

00:13:25.000 Corporate America is pretty efficient.

00:13:28.000 Like efficiency.

00:13:29.000 They work weekends.

00:13:30.000 They work weekends.

00:13:31.000 Efficiency is its core value.

00:13:33.000 And it's efficiency, corporate efficiency that we should be afraid of.

00:13:37.000 And so what I think, if I could just say it's phenomenal, but this is the struggle right now on the right or whatever, the conservative America.

00:13:48.000 And what I've found is that the people that would oppose you in what you're saying, which in a different time I might have because I was completely steeped in Hayek and Milton Friedman, who I still have appreciation for me too.

00:14:02.000 And I think they had somebody.

00:14:05.000 Tons of insights, but there was almost a dogmatic, quasi-religious undertone in the conservative movement.

00:14:12.000 Thou shalt never speak ill of anything ever in the economy if it has to do with the corporation or free market capitalism.

00:14:18.000 Like that was one of the commandments of the conservative movement.

00:14:22.000 And if you said it amazingly, instantaneously, you're a Marxist.

00:14:24.000 Well, no, actually, I can make some points about being a Marxist.

00:14:28.000 And I think you pioneered that in a lot of different ways.

00:14:31.000 But anyone who would disagree with what you're saying, I question how could they come to that conclusion?

00:14:37.000 Is it because they're being funded or is it because...

00:14:39.000 Well, they maybe haven't thought about it or they don't have.

00:14:42.000 I mean, look, I can't, you know, other people's motives are very hard to assess.

00:14:45.000 I can describe my own, and they're very simple.

00:14:48.000 Anybody who threatens my family or the structure from which I've derived the overwhelming majority of the satisfaction and joy in my life, that's my family, my wife and children.

00:14:58.000 I would include my dogs.

00:15:00.000 Anybody who threatens that or makes it harder for my children to form something like that is my enemy.

00:15:05.000 And I mean enemy.

00:15:07.000 I really mean that.

00:15:08.000 That is the most basic threat.

00:15:10.000 You can increase my tax rate from 50% to 60%.

00:15:12.000 I won't like it.

00:15:14.000 But if you make it impossible for my kids to get married, I'm at war with you because you're threatening, well, first of all, my ability to pass on my genes.

00:15:23.000 Like, this is the most basic, this is the most basic human drive is to pass on your genes, is to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

00:15:32.000 I would just say one thing.

00:15:33.000 I've been so obsessed with this, and I've actually been meaning to write a book on it, but I just, I've been too scattered to do it.

00:15:38.000 But what you're really seeing is a war against nature.

00:15:41.000 The things that you are forbidden to say are almost always the most basic and obvious things connected to the natural order.

00:15:48.000 In other words, rules that we didn't make, but that we encountered when we arrived here on earth.

00:15:52.000 Okay?

00:15:53.000 Like biological sex or, you know, pick one.

00:15:58.000 They hate the acknowledgement that there are forces larger than their own authority because it diminishes their authority.

00:16:05.000 They can't, that's why they can't stand when you're like, well, that's just the way it naturally is.

00:16:08.000 That's how we were born.

00:16:10.000 No, we control that.

00:16:10.000 What?

00:16:13.000 And yet, if you start ignoring the natural order, nature itself, if you hate nature, you can't win in the end.

00:16:20.000 It's a Tower of Babel situation.

00:16:21.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:16:22.000 You can't actually beat reality ultimately.

00:16:26.000 And yet, that's the basis of everything for them.

00:16:30.000 So why is it so offensive to say out loud, like, oh, I don't know, like before you destroy the patriarchy, tell me why it existed since the beginning of recorded time.

00:16:40.000 Was there some reason for that?

00:16:41.000 Was it just pure meanness?

00:16:42.000 Did every society, like in the history of man, decide to come up with the same structure just to like oppress people because they got off on oppressing people?

00:16:50.000 I mean, maybe.

00:16:51.000 Kind of hard to believe that they, you know, sprouted all over the earth in pretty much the same way with some exceptions, but not really many.

00:16:58.000 Maybe there's something innate about that.

00:17:00.000 And maybe before we destroy it, we should consider the consequences of destroying it.

00:17:03.000 And of course, the consequences are on display right now, which is like total atomization, alienation, spike in suicide rate, drug addiction, no one gets married.

00:17:12.000 It's like super depressing and dystopian.

00:17:14.000 Who's the beneficiary of that?

00:17:16.000 Anyone who seeks to control you.

00:17:18.000 It's very hard to control people who have a loyalty that's greater to something than you.

00:17:22.000 And when you have a family, your loyalty is not even in question.

00:17:25.000 My loyalty is to my family.

00:17:27.000 Period.

00:17:27.000 That's so much bigger than any idea, any ideology.

00:17:30.000 Like, you screw with my kids, I'll shoot you, period. 1.00

00:17:33.000 Every parent feels that way. 0.99

00:17:34.000 So they have to destroy that in order to make certain that you're an obedient little worker serf, which is exactly the plan.

00:17:40.000 Now, if I sound crazy, it's only because maybe I am crazy. 0.80

00:17:45.000 But that's true.

00:17:46.000 But you're making sense.

00:17:47.000 And what I find interesting is that we're entering this post-political moment where you mentioned this when we were kind of chatting earlier.

00:17:55.000 Glenn Greenwald and myself and you, we're all kind of agreeing on the same sort of problems all the time.

00:18:01.000 Yeah.

00:18:02.000 Where if you actually believe in freedom of speech, family formation, Western civilization, you could call it, then we're all allies against this kind of corporatist America that we're all living in.

00:18:14.000 Yes.

00:18:15.000 And that's global, too.

00:18:16.000 But here's where I think the conservative movement went wrong is for the last decade, especially is, and you saw this in kind of what Mitt Romney said in 2012 when he's running for president, when he said, corporations are people, my friend, almost this kind of corporate idolatry that existed, that the corporate masters are on our team and they're always going to be kind of looking out for us.

00:18:35.000 And the Boston Consulting Group guy said that?

00:18:37.000 Yeah, the Bank Capital people.

00:18:38.000 Oh, Bank Capital, right?

00:18:39.000 Yeah.

00:18:40.000 Sure, I thought it was McKinsey.

00:18:41.000 You know, they all kind of all blend together.

00:18:43.000 They've all been to Wuhan many times.

00:18:47.000 The shipping our jobs and many other things overseas.

00:18:51.000 But the issue, what you're talking about is a return to actual conservatism, which is faith first, then family, duty to country, and not necessarily this kind of overindulgent, like we need more piles of plastic from China, stuff we're never going to use.

00:19:08.000 We're going to put in our garage to get people to take away and put in these storage units mentality that has infected us the last couple decades.

00:19:14.000 It doesn't make you happy.

00:19:15.000 It doesn't make you happy.

00:19:16.000 What makes you happy are your relationships.

00:19:18.000 It's really, it's really simple.

00:19:19.000 There's actually a lot of social science in this.

00:19:21.000 People have studied what makes people happy.

00:19:24.000 And it's worth listening to people who've lived longer lives.

00:19:27.000 Like, what made you happy?

00:19:28.000 You know, you're really successful.

00:19:29.000 I know a lot of successful people.

00:19:30.000 I've never met one who said, you know, getting super rich made me happy.

00:19:34.000 I'm not against being super rich, but I've never met one person who said that brought joy to my life.

00:19:39.000 Not one, not one.

00:19:40.000 And I know a ton.

00:19:42.000 No, what makes you happy is the familiar things, your family, a place.

00:19:47.000 I mean, that's something else that we have lost is a sense of place.

00:19:51.000 Like, I'm from here.

00:19:52.000 You know, these are my people.

00:19:54.000 That's where my parents are buried.

00:19:55.000 Like, that's a basic human desire.

00:19:59.000 I've spent my whole life in this little town in Maine in the summertime.

00:20:02.000 And I've watched the economy go from sort of teetering to non-existent.

00:20:07.000 And I've seen all the attendant social ills that follow, right?

00:20:10.000 When men don't have jobs, specifically men, people don't get married, and the social fabric unravels.

00:20:16.000 What's been so interesting is coming from a city to this place every year for 50 years, I used to think, well, why don't they move?

00:20:22.000 Like, there's no opportunity here.

00:20:24.000 And I remember asking someone, a good friend of mine who I grew up with, they're like, why don't people move? 0.98

00:20:28.000 He's like, well, because they're from here.

00:20:31.000 This is where they're from.

00:20:32.000 I don't know.

00:20:33.000 Your family's been here for 300 years.

00:20:35.000 You know, the cemetery's got all your relatives in it.

00:20:37.000 Like, what do you mean?

00:20:38.000 Why don't they move?

00:20:39.000 This is where they're from.

00:20:41.000 And I was like, yeah, but I don't know.

00:20:43.000 Aren't you supposed to sort of be flexible with the movement of global capital?

00:20:47.000 And they're like, well, yeah, but I'm from here.

00:20:50.000 Thinking, that's not a very articulate answer, but it doesn't make it a less true answer.

00:20:54.000 In fact, it makes it a more profound answer.

00:20:56.000 It speaks to what people really want, which is to be from somewhere.

00:21:00.000 That rootedness is a real thing.

00:21:02.000 It's the real things that we're ignoring.

00:21:05.000 None of the real things ever get airtime.

00:21:08.000 It's so interesting.

00:21:09.000 The addiction thing, I mean, it don't even get me going, but like as someone who, you know, is now sober, I've thought a lot about it personally.

00:21:18.000 But you watch the whole country get addicted to things, like real things too, not just nicotine, which I'm still proudly addicted to, but like opioids or something where there's no kind of happy endgame.

00:21:31.000 And this happens on a mass scale and hundreds of thousands of people die and nobody says anything about it. 0.95

00:21:35.000 Not just like, well, why did the Sacklers pump this garbage into West Virginia? 0.97

00:21:38.000 But the more basic question, why did the people of West Virginia take it? 0.90

00:21:42.000 Who's getting on opioids?

00:21:43.000 Like there's no kind of success story you can look at and be like, you know, my neighbor did opioids and it really improved his life.

00:21:48.000 No, he died.

00:21:50.000 So they're doing it anyway.

00:21:51.000 Why are they doing that?

00:21:52.000 And it's because their most basic needs, which are not food and shelter, but like some deeper needs, are being not just unmet, but completely ignored.

00:22:00.000 So once you start meditating on that for a moment, you're like, the way we structure this whole deal is off.

00:22:06.000 It's not actually helping anyone at all.

00:22:10.000 And I think one of the main drivers, and you mentioned this, is the hyper-feminization of our country.

00:22:14.000 And someone who wrote a great book about this is Elizabeth Warren.

00:22:17.000 I can't believe I'm saying this.

00:22:18.000 Two income tracks.

00:22:19.000 Yeah. 0.60

00:22:19.000 And it was, she was talking about how sending both the mother and the father by almost mandatory decree into the workforce is going to actually make people less free. 0.60

00:22:30.000 And poorer, by the way, and more worried about money.

00:22:33.000 So you get on, I mean, I grew up in a world, again, I'm 51, so I'm not, you know, 81, but I grew up in a country where it was very normal for people, middle class, not just rich people, middle class people, to raise their own children.

00:22:45.000 Like you didn't axiomatically automatically hire someone from a third world country to raise your children.

00:22:51.000 Like you did it yourself.

00:22:52.000 And it was overwhelmingly women who did it because most cases, not all, but most cases, they kind of wanted to. 1.00

00:22:58.000 My ladies still want to. 1.00

00:23:00.000 And if you ask, there are a ton of surveys on this: would you prefer to raise your own kids? 1.00

00:23:04.000 Maybe not through high school or something. 0.92

00:23:06.000 At some point, they go to school and you don't need to, you know, wipe their butts or whatever.

00:23:09.000 But like when, you know, from birth to four, do you want to be there for your own kids? 1.00

00:23:14.000 Like the overwhelming majority of women want that. 0.99

00:23:16.000 They actually want that. 1.00

00:23:18.000 That's what they really want.

00:23:19.000 Not to go work.

00:23:20.000 To go be a partner in some law firm in Manhattan or something.

00:23:22.000 But America tells my daughters, I have three daughters, like the highest level of attainment, not just materially, but spiritually, is to work at some creepy investment bank that doesn't know your last name or care if you die.

00:23:33.000 That's the most important thing you could do to serve global capital.

00:23:35.000 In fact, I believe Sheryl Sandberg wrote a whole book on this called Lean In.

00:23:39.000 The most important thing you can do to self-actualize is to work for some creepy multinational doing something pointless.

00:23:46.000 And if you do that and give up the promise and your biological imperatives, the promise of a family and children, I don't know, you win.

00:23:54.000 And every living human being knows that's not a win, it's a loss.

00:23:57.000 And if that happened to your kids, you would weep.

00:23:59.000 And so would they, by the way.

00:24:01.000 And yet no one ever challenges it.

00:24:04.000 And I don't know why.

00:24:05.000 And by the way, just to be totally clear, I'm not even an evangelical.

00:24:08.000 I'm like a lapsed Episcopalian.

00:24:10.000 So I'm not, and I'm very pro-evangelical, but I'm not coming at it.

00:24:13.000 I didn't grow up in a cult.

00:24:14.000 I grew up in La Jolla, California in a non-churchgoing Episcopalian family.

00:24:18.000 So like, I'm coming at this from just a secular, just like, look around, you know, what's going on point of view.

00:24:23.000 Even though I am, you know, a Christian.

00:24:25.000 But I, anyway, that's the point.

00:24:26.000 You don't need to be from some, you know, out-of-step sect to believe this.

00:24:33.000 You just have to be human and acknowledge what people actually want as opposed to what a very small group of super unhappy people are telling you you should want.

00:24:42.000 What I think the danger is, though, is now the multi-trillion dollar corporations have found a partner that they've been looking for for many decades, which is the social woke activists.

00:24:51.000 And they both want the same thing.

00:24:52.000 And they didn't realize it until recently.

00:24:54.000 So the multi-trillion dollar corporations used to do deals with the Republicans.

00:24:58.000 The problem with the Republicans is they actually represent all the family people.

00:25:01.000 Right.

00:25:02.000 And so there was always kind of incongruency with the multi-trillion dollar corporations and the Republicans because the corporations were kind of saying, wait, why is it that all of your daughters are getting married when they're 23?

00:25:12.000 Why don't they come work for us?

00:25:14.000 And there was always this kind of, it kind of just buttressed up against that.

00:25:17.000 And it was never really sorted out.

00:25:20.000 Because of Trump, largely, by the way, because of the reaction to Trump, all of a sudden there's been this realignment politically where the SJW kind of social disintegrationist nihilists, if you will, who have theological beliefs towards the world, they have found these corporations that actually have shared interests.

00:25:39.000 Well, for sure.

00:25:41.000 And one fuels the other.

00:25:43.000 I mean, they're in symbiosis.

00:25:45.000 And again, I'm not a super genius at all.

00:25:49.000 I probably have 110 IQ or 105 or something.

00:25:51.000 I'm like, it takes me a while to figure stuff out, but I'm paid to watch.

00:25:55.000 So I started to notice, like, okay, there's all these angry leftists in the street.

00:26:00.000 What do we know about leftists?

00:26:01.000 Well, they hate capitalism.

00:26:02.000 We hate capitalism.

00:26:03.000 We're socialism.

00:26:04.000 Okay.

00:26:05.000 Okay.

00:26:05.000 That's a perspective.

00:26:06.000 So obviously you're going to attack the capitalists, right?

00:26:08.000 Who are the capitalists?

00:26:09.000 Well, they're the big companies.

00:26:10.000 They're literally controlling capital.

00:26:13.000 And yet they got a pass.

00:26:15.000 Huh, that's kind of weird.

00:26:17.000 Why are you blowing up the liquor store on your street or the pizza shop?

00:26:21.000 Why aren't you going after the Apple store and Apple itself and Jeff Bezos?

00:26:24.000 They're the capitalist.

00:26:25.000 No, it didn't touch them.

00:26:26.000 Then they're like, oh, we're against law enforcement.

00:26:28.000 Okay, then I'm sure you're going to go after the FBI, aren't you?

00:26:31.000 Because it's the biggest law enforcement agency in the United States.

00:26:33.000 And by the way, commit a lot of abuses.

00:26:36.000 No. 0.99

00:26:36.000 We're going after some working class guy making 55 grand to walk through poor neighborhoods and risk his life. 0.99

00:26:42.000 He's the villain. 1.00

00:26:43.000 Really?

00:26:44.000 Aren't you kind of missing the point there a little bit?

00:26:45.000 Like, I can actually get on board with like, let's pull back from law enforcement a little bit.

00:26:48.000 I don't think the post office needs a million rounds of nine millimeter every year.

00:26:51.000 Okay.

00:26:51.000 Like I can kind of get on board with that.

00:26:53.000 No.

00:26:54.000 It was after the little guy, the beat cop.

00:26:56.000 So then I'm thinking, well, wait a second, you're missing it.

00:26:58.000 If you don't attack capitalism, go after Apple.

00:26:58.000 You're missing it.

00:27:00.000 And they're like, I can't hear you.

00:27:03.000 The real problem is restaurants.

00:27:04.000 And you're like, huh, maybe what's actually going on bears no resemblance to what they say is going on.

00:27:10.000 Maybe this is a power grab by the most powerful using the disaffected and the losers in Antifa.

00:27:17.000 I mean, they're all sort of demonstrably losers, but who cares about them? 0.86

00:27:20.000 It's not about them. 0.97

00:27:22.000 It's not about some unhappy girl with blue hair who's smashing car windows.

00:27:25.000 It's about the people paying for her to do it.

00:27:27.000 And they're the people she claims to hate, but is in fact allied with.

00:27:30.000 Because they have shared objectives.

00:27:32.000 And bingo.

00:27:33.000 And shared hatred of traditional America.

00:27:35.000 Yeah, I mean, they're just basically, they're just the shock troops for global capitalism.

00:27:39.000 God, I sound crazy, but I mean it.

00:27:41.000 No, you're making sense.

00:27:44.000 So I guess where President Trump, who I consider to be a friend, he didn't actually capitalize on this strongly enough.

00:27:52.000 And I sent endless memos to the White House and to the campaign, you know, people that I knew as many that would listen to me, is Joe Biden is the corporate candidate.

00:28:02.000 Yes.

00:28:02.000 You have an opportunity to be the not corporate candidate.

00:28:05.000 And I don't think that framing was actually ever successfully made.

00:28:09.000 I don't think that argument was ever made where he is funded by the most wealthy people on the planet.

00:28:14.000 He's going to go win the wealthiest counties.

00:28:16.000 I'm actually representing normal people.

00:28:19.000 I think that even with all the fraud and all that, we can get into it.

00:28:22.000 I think that that would have been a multi-point boost for him, even with his amazing support that he already was able to have.

00:28:28.000 Of course.

00:28:29.000 Because it's true.

00:28:30.000 And it helps when you tell the truth.

00:28:32.000 It's just like, right.

00:28:33.000 There are a lot of reasons.

00:28:34.000 I couldn't agree with that analysis more.

00:28:37.000 There were people on the campaign who decided Joe Biden is ahead in the polls because he's got control of the critical retired rap star vote.

00:28:44.000 And we need to win as many retired rap stars as we possibly can and do pressers with them.

00:28:48.000 Okay, fine.

00:28:48.000 By the way, I'm not against winning over retired rap stars or whatever.

00:28:52.000 But they missed thematically the whole point of it.

00:28:56.000 There's been this massive realignment.

00:28:57.000 Middle class people now, after 100 years of being represented by one party, have no home.

00:29:02.000 Why don't you take them and put them under your wing and protect them from the forces who seek to destroy them?

00:29:06.000 It's not hard.

00:29:08.000 Offer your voters something real, which is protection from the bad guys, and it's not hard to identify them.

00:29:16.000 And they will be so excited that you will win.

00:29:19.000 And one of the things that normal people really appreciate, normal people being a euphemism for those who can't afford bodyguards, is the ability to go to the grocery store without getting raped. 0.88

00:29:28.000 They're into it. 0.65

00:29:28.000 Okay, let me just say that. 0.65

00:29:30.000 The biggest landslide in American history was 1972, Richard Nixon, a guy who had a fraction of the charm of Donald Trump, who had a fraction of the intuitive understanding of voters of Donald Trump.

00:29:40.000 And he still won more electoral votes than anybody has ever won.

00:29:46.000 And he had only one real issue, which is law and order.

00:29:48.000 The crazies are trying to make the world dangerous.

00:29:50.000 I'm going to protect you.

00:29:51.000 It's not hard.

00:29:53.000 You had a year where the crazies were making measurably America more dangerous, which means a crappier place to live for normal people.

00:30:01.000 And you didn't run on that because you had people in your campaign who were like so guilty about their own pampered upbringings and how they got into prestigious colleges fraudulently or whatever.

00:30:10.000 They were working out their own interior guilt trips on the country because that's what they do.

00:30:15.000 They feel bad about their unearned privilege.

00:30:17.000 So they're like, oh, we can't say anything about the destruction of American society because I feel guilty that, you know, whatever, my dad paid to get me to Ivy League school.

00:30:25.000 So you just can't say anything.

00:30:26.000 And it's like, no, reframe your head a little bit.

00:30:29.000 You're here to represent actual people who have real concerns, not BS, you know, symbolic concerns.

00:30:36.000 It's something symbolic about what's happening right now.

00:30:38.000 There is an actual measurable degradation of the quality of life for middle-class people.

00:30:43.000 It's measurable.

00:30:45.000 And like, fix that, and you win.

00:30:47.000 And I think Trump understood that.

00:30:49.000 And I think that he was undercut at every turn by people who didn't.

00:30:53.000 And I think the framing very well could have been: Joe Biden is the representation of every institution that has betrayed you and funded by others.

00:31:02.000 And he did that kind of brilliantly in 2016 with Hillary Clinton.

00:31:06.000 And Joe Biden was actually a bolder manifestation of that.

00:31:11.000 I mean, Joe Biden didn't even pretend to be supported by grassroots Americans or by middle-income earners.

00:31:17.000 It was, I'm going to take as much money as I possibly can raise in my Zoom fundraisers, and we're going to lock the country down again.

00:31:24.000 Well, yeah, he ran a campaign through a Chinese software product that's being used.

00:31:30.000 I mean, like, it was a Zoom campaign.

00:31:32.000 That's like a metaphor for everything.

00:31:33.000 And there is no Joe Biden.

00:31:35.000 I mean, Joe Biden doesn't sort of exist as an independent force.

00:31:38.000 He's just purely a puppet for larger forces, obviously.

00:31:42.000 He's despised by a lot of the people around him.

00:31:45.000 It was just so clear what was going on and so dark, so cynical and dystopian and scary.

00:31:52.000 You know, it makes the hair on your arms go up just to describe it.

00:31:55.000 And nobody was willing to really say what was going on.

00:31:59.000 Part of the sad thing for me, I think there, I think there was voter fraud.

00:32:03.000 I think macro there was massive voter fraud in that the tech companies shut down one side completely.

00:32:10.000 I mean, that's putting a thumb on the scale if they're, I mean, that's fraud.

00:32:14.000 They rigged the election, but out in the open.

00:32:17.000 And I'm willing to entertain any other possibilities.

00:32:20.000 But I do think the sad thing about that conversation, which is an important conversation, is that to some extent it does distract us from what we are arguing.

00:32:29.000 Like, what do we believe?

00:32:30.000 Like, what's the point of having a political party?

00:32:31.000 You've got the Republican Party.

00:32:32.000 What does it stand for?

00:32:33.000 Let's have that conversation, shall we?

00:32:36.000 And we haven't because the very people who would like to keep the party unchanged are distracting us with things that are relevant, but they're not the whole conversation.

00:32:47.000 Like, why didn't anybody in the Republican Party go after Google?

00:32:51.000 It's a serious question.

00:32:53.000 Like, you can't have a democracy where a company that's wholly aligned with one side is shutting down conversation in the middle of a presidential campaign.

00:33:01.000 You can't have a democracy under those circumstances.

00:33:03.000 The Republicans were being disadvantaged by it.

00:33:05.000 Why aren't they saying that?

00:33:06.000 And they're not saying it.

00:33:07.000 They're like, three of them are saying it.

00:33:08.000 Like, that's kind of a mystery to me.

00:33:11.000 And I would like to have that conversation.

00:33:13.000 Well, NetPAC, which is Google's PAC, has funded a lot of Republicans throughout the years.

00:33:17.000 Oh, I'm very aware.

00:33:18.000 And you see it in the behavior.

00:33:20.000 And the chamber is very powerful.

00:33:21.000 Well, yeah, the chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, who's a senator who shall remain nameless from Utah, Mike Lee, basically, and he didn't do it alone, but he did it with others for sure.

00:33:34.000 But made certain, he protected Google basically for the past four years.

00:33:39.000 When, you know, that's in, that's basically a direct attack on the interests of his voters.

00:33:44.000 And I don't know how he's been allowed to get away with that.

00:33:46.000 I've mentioned it a couple of times.

00:33:47.000 He doesn't like it when I do.

00:33:48.000 He's complained about it.

00:33:49.000 I think he's a nice person.

00:33:50.000 I think he's right about a lot of other things.

00:33:52.000 Mike Lee's very smart, definitely smarter than I am.

00:33:55.000 But on that one issue, which is not a small issue, it's the central issue.

00:33:59.000 He betrayed his voters, in my opinion.

00:34:01.000 Do you think he was resorting to ideology over what was right for his voters?

00:34:05.000 You know, it's such a great question.

00:34:06.000 I do think that.

00:34:08.000 And I've heard a lot of people say, so I know a lot of people who share my view, of course, because they text me all the time, and they're like, Mike Lee's been bought off by Google.

00:34:14.000 I don't think that's right.

00:34:15.000 I don't think that's right.

00:34:16.000 I think Mike Lee is an honest guy, actually.

00:34:18.000 And I know Mike, and I unagree with him on this issue.

00:34:20.000 He's very smart, and he's extremely principled.

00:34:24.000 And I hope he hears me say that because I mean it.

00:34:26.000 He's really smart.

00:34:28.000 Like he'd be a good Supreme Court justice, I think.

00:34:31.000 But he is a libertarian on this question.

00:34:34.000 And in his view, the most dangerous thing you can do is interfere in the workings of a market.

00:34:39.000 Now, I would argue this isn't really a market in the sense that market capitalism was explained to me as a child, or Hayek wrote about it.

00:34:45.000 This isn't a free market.

00:34:47.000 It's a corporatist-controlled market.

00:34:48.000 And they don't believe in markets anyway.

00:34:50.000 This is a monopoly.

00:34:51.000 It's antithetical to markets.

00:34:52.000 It's the opposite of a market.

00:34:54.000 It's shutting down a market for the benefit of one company.

00:34:56.000 And you think Sergey Brin is reading F.A. Hayek, like in pursuit of markets at night?

00:35:00.000 You think these guys are like capitalists?

00:35:02.000 They don't have a market.

00:35:03.000 They have a monopoly.

00:35:04.000 Market capitalists hate monopolies because they make market capitalism impossible.

00:35:09.000 Right.

00:35:09.000 Of course.

00:35:10.000 I think, with respect to Mike Lee, who I do think should answer for the crimes he's committed, but I do think that he did that because he sincerely believes the greatest.

00:35:21.000 I mean, I just think he's got a philosophical difference.

00:35:23.000 Yeah, and I think, though, that if I were to explain it for him, which I wouldn't agree with this, I think he would say it's my ideology.

00:35:30.000 Yes, I agree.

00:35:31.000 And I think it's really dangerous, too, though.

00:35:33.000 It's both admirable because I don't think he's sleazy.

00:35:37.000 I don't think he's like getting paid under the table or whatever.

00:35:39.000 And a couple of his staff went to work at Google, and all these people were telling me, oh, it's an inside deal.

00:35:43.000 It's like, I know Mike Lee.

00:35:44.000 I don't think that's a good idea.

00:35:44.000 That doesn't strike me.

00:35:45.000 I agree.

00:35:46.000 No, I think he's got a sincere ideological difference.

00:35:48.000 And I just sincerely disagree.

00:35:51.000 And that's kind of how.

00:35:52.000 But I think that if you allow ideology to be the only kind of compass of which you navigate public policy, then we're no different than leftists then.

00:36:04.000 Well, try to raise your kids like that.

00:36:06.000 I mean, life is impossible to predict.

00:36:10.000 It's impossible to fully understand.

00:36:12.000 My father always says when I was little, I grew up with my dad and my brother.

00:36:15.000 He would always say, he's a very wise man.

00:36:17.000 He would say, the root of all wisdom is knowing what you are.

00:36:19.000 Meditate on that.

00:36:20.000 Meditate on your shortcomings, your failings, your inability to perceive what's going to happen next.

00:36:26.000 Your lack of wisdom.

00:36:27.000 The more cognizant of that you are, the wiser you will be.

00:36:30.000 Always factor in the unknown into all of your decisions.

00:36:33.000 The rule of unintended consequences.

00:36:34.000 I mean, this is what every parent, I hope, would tell a kid.

00:36:38.000 Ideology doesn't allow room for that because it has the answers already.

00:36:44.000 So in real life, you know, you get leukemia and die and you don't kind of expect to and you forgot to buy insurance or, you know, one of your kids gets addicted to drugs.

00:36:51.000 And like, I don't know, what's the kind of roadmap for that?

00:36:53.000 Well, there isn't one.

00:36:54.000 You have to kind of take it on a case-by-case basis.

00:36:56.000 And hopefully you're informed by your deeper values, which should be deeper than ideology, like love and compassion.

00:37:03.000 And like, I love this child.

00:37:04.000 Like, what's the best thing to do?

00:37:05.000 I don't know.

00:37:06.000 No book can tell me that, you know?

00:37:08.000 Well, and precisely. 0.79

00:37:09.000 Alexander Solshenitsyn famously said towards the end of the Gulag Archipelago, all of this was thanks to ideology.

00:37:16.000 Yes.

00:37:16.000 And if you only allow ideology to steer you in a certain direction, then we know where that goes.

00:37:22.000 I mean, we know the body can.

00:37:23.000 I completely agree with that.

00:37:25.000 I completely, and I believe principles are essential, and I try to have them, and I try not to violate them.

00:37:32.000 But I also think you should, you just need to approach life with humility.

00:37:37.000 You'll get it in the end anyway.

00:37:39.000 You know, when you're suffocating on your own, you know what I mean?

00:37:42.000 Like, you're probably going to die terrified and alone.

00:37:45.000 And at that point, you know, all your arrogance will have drained away.

00:37:49.000 But in the meantime, it's just so important to remember how much you don't know.

00:37:53.000 It's important to be in awe of the world around you, which you did not create.

00:37:58.000 And that's why I think nature is so essential.

00:38:00.000 Nature is basically God giving the finger to ideology.

00:38:04.000 You know, it's like, you think you know how it works?

00:38:07.000 I don't think you do because you didn't create the Sawtooth Mountains or whatever.

00:38:10.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:38:11.000 Like, this is so much bigger than you.

00:38:12.000 Stare at the night sky.

00:38:14.000 And ideology is basically a lie that tells you, it's the theory of everything you come up with when you're getting high freshman, you're in college.

00:38:22.000 You missed all that blessings.

00:38:23.000 I did.

00:38:24.000 But most people are like, yeah, we figured it out.

00:38:26.000 We got the whole idea.

00:38:26.000 Like, only children believe that.

00:38:29.000 Adults come to understand, like, I don't really know.

00:38:32.000 And when someone tells me, I don't really know, but I want to do the right thing, that's the guy I trust.

00:38:37.000 Yes.

00:38:38.000 And Trump was so unbelievably successful because he was inherently an anti-ideological candidate.

00:38:44.000 Oh, gosh, yes.

00:38:46.000 I was slow to get that because I was very ideological.

00:38:48.000 I still am.

00:38:49.000 I always have been.

00:38:50.000 No, I was too.

00:38:50.000 Oh, totally.

00:38:51.000 I grew up in the conservative movement that in some ways you were kind of creating and part of.

00:38:56.000 Well, so did I.

00:38:57.000 I grew up in it too.

00:38:58.000 I grew up doing my dad worked for the government during the Cold War.

00:39:00.000 That was all ideology.

00:39:02.000 Totally.

00:39:02.000 I mean, I was a Russian studies major.

00:39:05.000 I mean, to the extent I studied, but I was really super interested.

00:39:09.000 I read the Gulag Archipelago and I did it because I had an ideology and I wanted to understand the other, its competing ideology.

00:39:16.000 And I am by my nature ideological and in my head and all this stuff.

00:39:20.000 So it was a huge change for me.

00:39:22.000 And I'm just so grateful for it.

00:39:24.000 You should measure, this is a biblical principle, measure ideas and intentions by their results, by their fruit.

00:39:32.000 Like that's the whole thing.

00:39:33.000 Does it work or not?

00:39:34.000 I don't know.

00:39:35.000 Are your kids happy?

00:39:37.000 And if they're not, like, maybe it didn't work.

00:39:39.000 Well, and that's one of the main issues is that you have an entire political party that is hiding behind ideology, Republicans, and there are some things that aren't going well.

00:39:48.000 And they say, but no, but the principle, free trade works.

00:39:50.000 Don't you understand?

00:39:51.000 It's so amazing.

00:39:52.000 And that's one of the problems that we have with our country is.

00:39:55.000 It's totally right.

00:39:56.000 It's totally right.

00:39:58.000 People are interchangeable widgets. 0.99

00:40:00.000 And it doesn't matter whether the person is male or female or intersex or one of the other 72 gender categories. 0.70

00:40:07.000 They're all the same. 0.95

00:40:08.000 And that is such a violation of what is true fundamentally, a truth that we didn't create and can't change, that it will never work.

00:40:17.000 And so one of the things that reassures me as I look at a society that's gone completely off the rails is that it can't endure because nothing that's this untrue can persist.

00:40:27.000 Like ultimately, it will collapse.

00:40:29.000 And I don't root for the collapse of anything or any society.

00:40:31.000 I'm a preserver, not a destroyer, I hope.

00:40:34.000 But I just, it makes me feel better.

00:40:36.000 When Facebook tells me there are 72 gender categories, I'm like, it doesn't bother me that much because it's like there actually aren't there two. 0.60

00:40:43.000 And ultimately, nature is going to win because you can't beat nature.

00:40:49.000 You just can't.

00:40:50.000 Period.

00:40:51.000 Unfortunately, a lot of people are going to get hurt along the way to finding that out.

00:40:56.000 It is a doctrinaire kind of social reconstructionism to try to redefine nature.

00:41:02.000 But it doesn't work.

00:41:03.000 I mean, the Soviets tried it. 0.81

00:41:04.000 Robespierre tried it.

00:41:05.000 I mean, every revolution.

00:41:06.000 You know how smart the people in Menlo Park are, right?

00:41:09.000 Like they, they really think they've gotten it figured out.

00:41:11.000 But they're not because, I mean, I think they're all smarter than I am in like an abstract way.

00:41:17.000 Facetiously, of course.

00:41:17.000 But like this, every revolution is the same.

00:41:22.000 You know, well, whatever.

00:41:23.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:41:24.000 But the point is, that fighting against natural imperatives, things that are true, whether you want them to be true or not.

00:41:31.000 And there are a lot of things that are true that I wish were not true.

00:41:34.000 I mean, I love drinking.

00:41:35.000 I wish I could drink.

00:41:36.000 I can't, so I don't.

00:41:38.000 I do think there's something inherent about that.

00:41:40.000 People who can't drink are generally, it's a genetic thing.

00:41:43.000 I think it is in my case. 1.00

00:41:44.000 I wish I could change that, but I can't.

00:41:46.000 And that's just, that's just, I wish, do you know what I mean?

00:41:49.000 I wasn't left-handed or not dyslexic or a lot of things about myself.

00:41:51.000 I was born with that.

00:41:52.000 I can't change and like okay, but I don't spend any time worrying about it because you just roll with it.

00:41:58.000 You have to accept reality as it is.

00:42:00.000 You can't change the weather.

00:42:02.000 There's something very deep going on with the climate stuff which I find hilarious but also threatening.

00:42:07.000 Like earth worship yeah no, but I I'm more of an earth worship, like I actually love nature, I spend, I try to, I live, I mean, I'm outside all day long that's, I've organized my life to be outside.

00:42:16.000 Okay, that's how strongly I feel about nature.

00:42:18.000 I love trees.

00:42:20.000 You know I have all these weird tics about nature.

00:42:22.000 They're the opposite.

00:42:23.000 They think they're in charge of nature.

00:42:27.000 So actually we have climate cycles that not only are they well known, they formed the earth.

00:42:32.000 I live in a place in Maine on a glacial lake.

00:42:34.000 A glacier is a chunk of ice formed by climate change that cut a trench through the mountains, in fact, created the mountains in a lot of cases, into which water flowed when it melted, and now that's the lake I live on.

00:42:48.000 So that's Climate change, there's a physical, there's physical evidence of its existence going back to the cooling of the earth.

00:42:56.000 It's clearly happening again now, but we imagine A, we're responsible for it, and B, we can control it.

00:43:03.000 You'd really have to be some sort of like crazed narcissist to believe that.

00:43:07.000 It's like, yeah, climate always changes.

00:43:09.000 Like, what do you think?

00:43:10.000 We had an ice age, buddy. 0.99

00:43:11.000 That's such a good point. 0.99

00:43:12.000 It's such a good point.

00:43:13.000 But these people who really do think the galaxy, you know, centers on them, that they're the sun in our solar system, like they're like, oh no, we did this.

00:43:22.000 Yes.

00:43:23.000 Really?

00:43:24.000 It's just, it tells you so much.

00:43:25.000 Like, in the end, it's about narcissism.

00:43:28.000 It's about I'm the center of the universe.

00:43:30.000 There is no God.

00:43:31.000 I am God.

00:43:32.000 And anything that suggests I'm not must be squelched immediately.

00:43:36.000 So I kind of want to end on that note.

00:43:37.000 And this is something you've said before in your speeches that I've heard you say, which is the true framing of what we're going through in our country is a theological debate, a worship of God or a worship of man.

00:43:46.000 Who's actually in charge?

00:43:48.000 And can you talk about your faith, how important it is to you?

00:43:52.000 And because what we have in our country more than anything else is people that have been told almost evangelistically to believe in secular, nihilistic, hedonistic self-indulgence.

00:44:03.000 And by the time they get 19 or 20, they are the most miserable generation in American history.

00:44:07.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:44:07.000 Can you talk about your own personal faith? 0.99

00:44:10.000 I mean, my eyes also have to be aware of that.

00:44:13.000 I am an Episcopalian.

00:44:15.000 Actually, after 51 years, I switched and became a Methodist two months ago.

00:44:18.000 I'm not sure how different it is, but at least not the Episcopal Church, which I've really come to despise.

00:44:22.000 The Church of my ancestors, but I hate it.

00:44:24.000 Anyway, so I am the last person you want to have a theological discussion with.

00:44:29.000 I'm not deeply grounded in theology.

00:44:31.000 I've read the New Testament and the Old Testament in their entirety, but I'm not a theologian at all.

00:44:36.000 And in fact, the older I get, the less interested in theology I am and the more interested I am in the basics.

00:44:42.000 And the basics to me are these: one, you're not in control.

00:44:45.000 You can't, you didn't control when you were born.

00:44:47.000 You're not going to control when you die.

00:44:49.000 You can't extend your life a single day.

00:44:51.000 That was true when Jesus said it. 0.97

00:44:53.000 It's true now.

00:44:54.000 So recognizing the limits of your own control is the essence of everything.

00:45:00.000 Okay.

00:45:00.000 It is the essence of wisdom.

00:45:02.000 That's the first thing.

00:45:04.000 The second thing is, if you don't recognize that and you imagine that you're in charge of everything, you will be humiliated, proved wrong, and super unhappy in the meantime.

00:45:17.000 And the third thing is, the only unchanging fact of life is its end, is death.

00:45:23.000 And I just think it's amazing we've constructed this entire society, you know, that considers everything fair inquiry or didn't until recently.

00:45:30.000 And that's the one topic nobody ever talks about.

00:45:33.000 Everybody on earth will die.

00:45:36.000 No one acknowledges that.

00:45:38.000 And increasingly, you're not even really allowed to talk about what might happen after.

00:45:42.000 Now, I don't have a super clear sight picture of what happens after.

00:45:45.000 I believe in God.

00:45:46.000 I think I'm positive there is an afterlife.

00:45:48.000 Its nature is murky to me.

00:45:50.000 But I believe that.

00:45:51.000 It's clearly true.

00:45:53.000 But I just, I can't believe that you could have a society, the West more broadly, that's at its core secular, which is another way of saying ignores the key fact of life, which is death.

00:46:04.000 And then I'm thinking, well, how can that work?

00:46:05.000 How can you have a study like that?

00:46:07.000 Well, we've never had one.

00:46:08.000 That's the truth.

00:46:09.000 There's never been a secular society at scale in human history till after the Second World War.

00:46:14.000 And that's only been 80 years.

00:46:15.000 We've never had it.

00:46:16.000 And maybe the reason you've never had it is because it absolutely doesn't work.

00:46:20.000 And this is not a pitch for the Episcopal Church or the Methodist Church or even Christianity.

00:46:25.000 It's an acknowledgement that you need to have meaning.

00:46:28.000 And meaning is not vacation.

00:46:31.000 And it's not, do you know what I mean?

00:46:33.000 Like truffle pasta, much as I love it.

00:46:35.000 Meaning is the answer to the most basic question: what happens when you die?

00:46:41.000 That's it.

00:46:42.000 It's right there.

00:46:42.000 That's the question.

00:46:44.000 And if you don't even bring that question up, you can't persist.

00:46:48.000 People will go insane and they'll become incredibly neurotic.

00:46:52.000 And that's what I noticed, how neurotic everybody is.

00:46:54.000 People are totally freaky.

00:46:55.000 Last thing I'll say: I was a fearful flyer from, I grew up in California, went to boarding school on the East Coast, so I had to fly all the time across the country.

00:47:04.000 And I started to get freaked out by flying.

00:47:06.000 I was on a couple bad flights, whatever.

00:47:08.000 That was 1983.

00:47:10.000 Almost 20 years, I was really afraid of flying.

00:47:13.000 I used to get super loaded on planes, just really drunk on planes.

00:47:16.000 And I would always smoke back when you could smoke on planes, even as a child.

00:47:20.000 And then 2001, 9-11 happens.

00:47:23.000 I go over, I'm in the news business, I go over to the Middle East.

00:47:26.000 I'm in a commercial air air, crash.

00:47:29.000 The plane I was in crashed.

00:47:31.000 And it crashed in a kind of slow-motion way where we knew it was crashing for like, I don't know, 20 minutes.

00:47:36.000 So it was like the most terrifying possible experience a fearful flyer could have. 0.88

00:47:40.000 It was like ridiculous. 0.90

00:47:42.000 Pakistan International Airways. 0.57

00:47:45.000 And anyway, whatever, I survived, of course, obviously.

00:47:48.000 But that changed my life.

00:47:50.000 I came home, I quit drinking, I had a fourth child.

00:47:54.000 My life just totally changed because of that one event.

00:47:58.000 But the main thing that happened in addition to those two things was I stopped being afraid to fly.

00:48:03.000 And the reason I stopped being afraid to fly was I had been forced to face for 20 minutes, like the thought, really the certainty I was going to die.

00:48:09.000 Like I thought we were going to die.

00:48:10.000 Like everyone on the plane thought we were going to die.

00:48:12.000 It was like, you can imagine.

00:48:14.000 And I didn't die.

00:48:15.000 And then I realized what I was afraid about on the plane was dying.

00:48:19.000 It wasn't the turbulence or whatever, being trapped in this aluminum tube.

00:48:23.000 It was the idea of dying.

00:48:25.000 And once that was clarified for me and I focused on it directly, what I'm really afraid of is dying.

00:48:31.000 And all neurosis comes from that fear.

00:48:33.000 Of course, that's what it is.

00:48:34.000 It's the fear of dying.

00:48:36.000 Once I focused on that directly, it went away.

00:48:40.000 And I would just get on planes and be like, am I ready to die?

00:48:42.000 I don't want to die.

00:48:42.000 I've got all these kids and I really like my life and all this stuff.

00:48:45.000 But like at some point, I will.

00:48:46.000 And once I address that directly in my head, every time I get on a flight, am I ready to go?

00:48:50.000 And even now, I like text all four kids, text my wife, can't text the dogs, but I would.

00:48:55.000 And it just goes away.

00:48:57.000 I'm like, I'm ready.

00:48:58.000 I am. 0.91

00:48:58.000 I'm ready to die. 0.91

00:48:59.000 So, in a small, very small bore way, that's what's going on with society at large.

00:49:05.000 If you have hundreds of millions of people who've never addressed directly the core fact of their life, which is imminent and fast-approaching death, of course, they're completely freaked out and superstitious and neurotic and weird and irrational and just like hopped up, right?

00:49:24.000 And it's the opposite.

00:49:25.000 They tell people, young people at age 15, there is no God.

00:49:28.000 Don't even try to pursue him.

00:49:30.000 There's no beauty, no truth.

00:49:31.000 All there is is a power struggle.

00:49:33.000 That's going to create a pretty screwed up generation very quickly.

00:49:36.000 For sure, but it's also pretending that their core fear isn't real or displacing that with like fake fears.

00:49:43.000 No, all of your fears come from, in the end, the certain knowledge that all of us is born with that we're going to die, that there's a time limit on this, on this adventure.

00:49:54.000 So just address that directly.

00:49:56.000 You're going to die.

00:49:59.000 It's, I will say, I have all these children, and one of them was like born feeling that way.

00:50:04.000 It's just so interesting.

00:50:04.000 When she turned like five, she said to me, I'm so sad.

00:50:07.000 I turned five.

00:50:08.000 I was like, why are you sad?

00:50:09.000 You're five.

00:50:09.000 Like, who doesn't want to be five?

00:50:11.000 That's like, that's the best.

00:50:12.000 Are you kidding? 0.63

00:50:12.000 No mortgage, get to play all day, endless Fig Newtons. 0.63

00:50:15.000 Like, that's just a good thing, five.

00:50:18.000 And she goes, because I don't want it to end.

00:50:19.000 And I was like, want what?

00:50:22.000 Freaky, deep spiritual child.

00:50:24.000 And she goes, my life. 0.68

00:50:26.000 Every birthday means I'm closer to the end.

00:50:28.000 And I'm like, whoa, man.

00:50:30.000 I don't know whose kid this is.

00:50:32.000 But that child, in a way, has always been the calmest because she like acknowledges that that's the er fear.

00:50:38.000 Probably shouldn't be saying this out loud, but I just have been thinking about it a lot.

00:50:40.000 We can.

00:50:41.000 No, no, no, I don't care.

00:50:42.000 I don't care.

00:50:43.000 I hope she's not watching.

00:50:45.000 That is really the true root of everything we're going through in this guy.

00:50:48.000 It's the root of all fear.

00:50:49.000 I mean, the basic things are the only things that matter.

00:50:54.000 Are you in an intimate relationship with another person?

00:50:56.000 Do you have love in your life?

00:50:58.000 Is there some measure of stability?

00:50:59.000 Have you reckoned with the unchangeable facts of life?

00:51:03.000 And the most basic is death.

00:51:04.000 Have you reckoned with that at all?

00:51:06.000 Or are you anesthetized to the point where you don't think of it? 0.92

00:51:10.000 Are you distracted by the digital garbage to the point it never enters your mind? 0.92

00:51:14.000 I mean, that's the state for most people. 0.50

00:51:15.000 It's certainly been the case for me for a lot of my life.

00:51:17.000 I'm not judging or anything.

00:51:19.000 I'm just saying it doesn't work because at some level, you know, it's true.

00:51:23.000 It's like a horror movie.

00:51:24.000 You know, he's waiting in the closet for you.

00:51:26.000 You just know.

00:51:26.000 So you don't want to go back into the house, but you have to.

00:51:29.000 And that makes you super neurotic.

00:51:31.000 Like, this is Freud in a sentence. 0.99

00:51:33.000 You're going to die.

00:51:34.000 You're upset about it. 1.00

00:51:35.000 Proceed from there.

00:51:36.000 I swear I should be a therapist because all the conversations would be like, what do you think happens when you die?

00:51:41.000 What?

00:51:42.000 People are so in the town that I grew up in, which is an affluent beach town.

00:51:46.000 You could do anything.

00:51:47.000 You could say anything.

00:51:48.000 This was like the liberal 70s.

00:51:50.000 If you wanted to become like a transgender nun or marry one or, you know, I mean, we had some weird stuff going on in my town.

00:51:55.000 It was totally cool.

00:51:56.000 Nobody judged. 0.98

00:51:57.000 But if you were going to die, well, that's disgusting. 0.98

00:52:00.000 And that's offensive. 0.96

00:52:01.000 And we don't talk about that here.

00:52:02.000 You just, no one died.

00:52:03.000 You just got in your 450 SLC and drove to Palm Springs and like no one saw you again and no one ever talked about it.

00:52:09.000 Death was like the one taboo.

00:52:11.000 And I remember even noticing it as a kid, like nobody ever dies in La Jolla.

00:52:16.000 And I do think, again, over time, that makes you unwise and unhappy.

00:52:20.000 And you try to do things while you live that would not be good for future generations or rooted in morality.

00:52:26.000 Well, sure.

00:52:26.000 I mean, that's a whole separate conversation.

00:52:28.000 If you have a place run by people who don't have their own children, like you get a different time horizon.

00:52:34.000 You know, there are a lot of things that I do or wouldn't do that I would change very much if I didn't have kids. 0.91

00:52:39.000 I mean, honestly, I'm just being, I'm just being honest.

00:52:42.000 I've got all these kids.

00:52:43.000 Like they're going to long outlive me, I hope.

00:52:45.000 And so that adds a completely different perspective.

00:52:49.000 And I hope that you are fruitful and multiply and you'll see, but it's like, it's crazy.

00:52:53.000 It just changes your perspective like completely, like completely. 0.97

00:52:57.000 I mean, I'm still a selfish jerk, but I mean, oh my gosh, before I had children, it was like insane. 0.98

00:53:02.000 Well, Tucker, you got to go address all of our thousands of students. 0.99

00:53:05.000 Last piece of advice for young people? 0.86

00:53:07.000 Get married. 1.00

00:53:09.000 Get married and have a ton of kids.

00:53:10.000 I mean, get married when you're too young, have more kids than you can afford.

00:53:14.000 Take a job you're not qualified for.

00:53:15.000 Live boldly.

00:53:16.000 Stop getting high.

00:53:17.000 Stop doing anything that blurs your vision or makes time go faster.

00:53:21.000 You're going to die before you know it.

00:53:23.000 Don't waste a second.

00:53:24.000 That's the sin is living thoughtlessly and wasting time.

00:53:28.000 It's the one thing you can't get back.

00:53:30.000 I've wasted a lot of money in my life.

00:53:32.000 Oh my gosh.

00:53:33.000 I don't care.

00:53:34.000 I don't regret any of it.

00:53:35.000 Every room service meal was worth it.

00:53:37.000 It was fine.

00:53:39.000 But any time that I wasted is really bitter for me because it's finite.

00:53:44.000 And so live as fully as you can.

00:53:46.000 And you can't control all this stuff that's going on.

00:53:48.000 You can't control what Google does.

00:53:50.000 And honestly, they're going to win.

00:53:51.000 Like the powers that be will win, at least in the short term.

00:53:54.000 Ultimately, they'll all blow up.

00:53:55.000 But like, we're powerless and hated.

00:53:58.000 I think this myself all the time.

00:53:59.000 Are they going to crush me?

00:54:00.000 Oh, yeah.

00:54:01.000 Okay.

00:54:03.000 But in the meantime, you know, I want to experience my life as fully as I possibly can. 0.83

00:54:11.000 And I think that starts with having like a ton of kids, like way more than is like Mormon levels of kids. 0.88

00:54:16.000 I mean that.

00:54:18.000 Tucker Carlson wisdom, everybody.

00:54:20.000 Tucker, thank you.

00:54:21.000 Don't give a barn burner.

00:54:22.000 Thanks so much.

00:54:23.000 Thanks.

00:54:24.000 Thank you.

00:54:28.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:54:30.000 Email us your questions.

00:54:31.000 As always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:54:34.000 If you guys want to get in the running to win a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine, type in Charlie Kirk Show to your podcast provider, hit subscribe, screenshot it, and email it to us directly, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:54:44.000 And thank you for supporting us at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:54:48.000 More big episodes coming soon.

00:54:50.000 Thanks so much.

The Charlie Kirk Show - December 21, 2020

Tucker Carlson | What Really Matters

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