The Charlie Kirk Show - Why Young People Are Turning to Cultural Marxism — And How To Fix It

00:00:00.000 Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production.

00:00:02.000 Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast One, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

00:00:09.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:10.000 This weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to speak at Calvary Chapel Chattanooga.

00:00:13.000 I am honored to be able to share this episode with you.

00:00:16.000 And as of today, we are live on radio stations across the country.

00:00:18.000 So check us out at charliekirk.com.

00:00:20.000 And as always, email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:23.000 We tackle the key issues and news of the day and so much more here on the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:27.000 And also, if you guys want to win a signed copy of the MAGA Doctrine, type in Charlie Kirk Show to your podcast provider, hit subscribe and leave us a five-star review.

00:00:36.000 Very important topics here discussed.

00:00:38.000 People really have been enjoying this sequence of speeches aired to you exclusively here on the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:45.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:46.000 Here we go.

00:00:48.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:49.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:52.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:55.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:58.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:59.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:00.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:09.000 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.

00:01:17.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:21.000 First of all, awesome to be here.

00:01:22.000 You have a great pastor here, by the way.

00:01:22.000 Thank you.

00:01:24.000 You should give it up for that.

00:01:25.000 You're an amazing pastor.

00:01:27.000 And love this weekend that we've had a chance to spend together.

00:01:30.000 Yeah, every one of these services has been different.

00:01:33.000 So if you missed the prior three, I think each one has its own unique flavor.

00:01:37.000 And I said I wanted one to be kind of dedicated to what's going on with young people in this country, specifically in education, some of the struggles.

00:01:46.000 And I just call it a crisis.

00:01:47.000 I'm just being as clear as I possibly can because there's a crisis with people under the age of 25 in this country.

00:01:54.000 And I think that almost everyone in a position of like political and cultural leadership is completely missing it.

00:02:01.000 And so in addition to being on 2,000 high school campuses, I also run a podcast.

00:02:06.000 We get about 6,000 emails a week from young people across the country of what they're struggling with and what they're dealing with.

00:02:12.000 And so I really kind of wanted to build this out of what's going on.

00:02:15.000 And I think that there's an interest.

00:02:18.000 There's a lot of agreement that there's something wrong.

00:02:21.000 I think a lot of adults think that there's something just not right and there's misaligned.

00:02:25.000 And I think that if we look at the landscape of young people in this country, let's just tell it as it is.

00:02:31.000 One out of four young people in this country in the last 90 days have seriously contemplated suicide.

00:02:36.000 Let's just stop there. 1.00

00:02:37.000 That should be the number one number.

00:02:40.000 Forget about employment statistics.

00:02:41.000 I mean, one out of four of our young people are contemplating killing themselves.

00:02:44.000 That's a center for disease control.

00:02:46.000 What are we doing?

00:02:47.000 And so, not to mention antidepressant medications up 300%, alcoholism, drug use, sexual abuse, social isolation, every number we could possibly imagine.

00:03:00.000 And you couple that together with we're on verge of a population collapse in this country.

00:03:05.000 Again, another number that should be kind of on the headline news.

00:03:07.000 We're on pace to have 500,000 less children next year than this year.

00:03:10.000 It's the most dramatic drop-off in the population that we've ever seen in our country's history.

00:03:16.000 So what exactly is going on?

00:03:17.000 And there's a lot of contributing factors.

00:03:19.000 The last three services, I focus primarily on the philosophical, theological, and ideological problems that are happening in our country.

00:03:27.000 And I'll touch on that briefly.

00:03:28.000 I just think that we're teaching ingratitude to our children.

00:03:30.000 We're not properly teaching our history.

00:03:32.000 We're teaching people to be angry that they live in America, not thankful that they live in America.

00:03:37.000 And I've focused on that quite a lot, but I don't think that's the complete picture.

00:03:40.000 I think that's definitely one of the input variables and formulas.

00:03:44.000 But there's something a lot deeper going on.

00:03:46.000 And there's a material side to this that people have to recognize and realize.

00:03:50.000 And so if you've grown exhausted in seeing Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, or even Louisville kind of being burning and rioting and looting, it's very easy to attribute some of that when it goes on for days.

00:04:02.000 It's like, oh, the kids, the young people don't quite understand their history, which is true, or they don't understand what's going on.

00:04:08.000 It's all correct.

00:04:09.000 But there's something that I think we have to get honest about, that despite a lot of young people working very hard and playing by the rules, their lives are not getting materially better.

00:04:17.000 And a lot of young people borrowed money they didn't have to go study things that didn't matter, go find jobs that didn't exist.

00:04:23.000 And we carted off a huge portion of our younger population to highly inflated degree mills with class sizes that are bigger than this church attendance, where learning is sparse, wisdom is non-existent, and skills are not being taught.

00:04:37.000 And we acted as if that's going to make us a wealthier and happier country.

00:04:40.000 And now 10 years later, when we've doubled our college population, we recognize that only 59% of kids that go to college graduate, 41% drop out.

00:04:47.000 The average college graduate in this country is graduating with $38,000 in student loan debt.

00:04:52.000 And we stuff them in our major metropolitan cities such as Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York, where you're not building equity, you're not buying property, you're renting, you're barely making enough money to survive.

00:05:02.000 And then after 10 years, we look at the data, we say, wow, out of all the people that borrowed money and went to college, 44% of them are employed in jobs that don't require college degrees.

00:05:11.000 So why did they go to college in the first place?

00:05:13.000 And so all of a sudden, we're seeing this very understandable outrage that when a young person is 28 and then they're 32, their material net worth is almost unchanged.

00:05:24.000 They're still maybe $40,000, $50,000, $70,000 in the hole.

00:05:28.000 They're working hard.

00:05:29.000 They are maybe sometimes working minimum wage jobs.

00:05:31.000 And so the traditional kind of center-right conservative response is like, well, work harder.

00:05:37.000 I agree with that.

00:05:38.000 I think that some people should work harder.

00:05:39.000 How are they supposed to work harder in the last nine months?

00:05:41.000 You shut down the entire country.

00:05:43.000 For a virus for young people that had a 0.00005 death rate for people our age, you took away spring sports, summer sports, prom, graduation, commencement, social gatherings, any sort of social connectivity, church gatherings across the country, trying to stop the spread.

00:05:58.000 We knew that was a lie.

00:05:59.000 It was never going to happen.

00:06:00.000 Slow the spread, maybe.

00:06:01.000 Stop the spread.

00:06:02.000 Stop saying it.

00:06:02.000 Be honest with us.

00:06:04.000 Don't treat us like infants.

00:06:05.000 And our generation is paying a disproportionate price here.

00:06:08.000 When you have bad trends that are happening, when you shut everything down, you have a crisis, those trends only continue and they accelerate.

00:06:14.000 And so now we need to kind of take a timeout and we say, what exactly is happening with people under the age of 25?

00:06:19.000 And are we creating, are we actually being able to hand a country to the next generation where they're going to have family formation?

00:06:26.000 They're going to have robust church attendance.

00:06:29.000 Are they going to have agreed upon morals and values?

00:06:31.000 And will they want to accept the country in the prior state?

00:06:34.000 So I'm telling you right now, when you have 30 million young people that don't believe the system works for them, when they're working hard and their net worth is not improving at all, where their debt burdens are unsustainable, medical debt, personal debt, credit card debt, student loan debt, not even talking about home mortgage debt, by the way.

00:06:50.000 At some point, the people with the most energy, they're going to topple the system that you live in.

00:06:56.000 And part of that is an awful idea.

00:06:58.000 I spent the last three services talking about how none of that is warranted.

00:07:01.000 But we have to get a lot better at recognizing that it's harder than ever in this country to be a 26-year-old, financially and materially.

00:07:09.000 And we made it really hard the last six months.

00:07:11.000 A great example is the airlines.

00:07:13.000 So we tell young people, just work harder, go get a skill.

00:07:15.000 I agree with that.

00:07:16.000 I'm going to talk about that in a little bit.

00:07:17.000 We just let off 13,000 pilots from working.

00:07:21.000 I mean, we are talking about people that have an incredible technical skill that are now being laid off.

00:07:26.000 And a lot of it was preventable, this kind of mass blanket shutdown where we were trying to kill a mouse with a missile, where we should have had people shelter in place, trust people to make good decisions.

00:07:36.000 And by the way, despite the attacks, despite the misrepresentations, front page of the New York Times five days ago, Sweden outpacing European countries in death rates, infection rates, mortality rates.

00:07:48.000 And then the subhead is: it's still unsure exactly what Sweden did correctly.

00:07:51.000 Well, I don't know.

00:07:52.000 They didn't shut down the entire country.

00:07:54.000 They treated people like adults.

00:07:56.000 And they also said, our young people are going to inherit whatever mess we create.

00:07:59.000 Maybe we should be very slow to shutting everything down.

00:08:03.000 And it turns out that their suicide rates remain basically unchanged.

00:08:06.000 The businesses weren't catastrophically destroyed.

00:08:09.000 And we shut, by the way, 100,000 businesses went bankrupt in just the last 90 days.

00:08:12.000 100,000 small businesses.

00:08:14.000 And so here's what ends up happening, which needs to be recognized.

00:08:18.000 Who's the shutdown been good for?

00:08:20.000 People say, no one, that's not true.

00:08:21.000 It's been really good for rich people.

00:08:24.000 And I'm a capitalist saying this.

00:08:26.000 And I'm telling you right now, when people that, Jeff Bezos, when his net worth has gone up by $65 billion when all of your net worth went down, there's a problem here.

00:08:35.000 And the problem is that working people are going to lose faith in this system.

00:08:39.000 And people that shower before work and shower after work, that work with their hands, these are the people that, whether you like it or not, they're the backbone of this country.

00:08:48.000 And I think that sometimes some of that anger is misaligned.

00:08:51.000 I think sometimes it's misattributed, but it's real, nevertheless.

00:08:54.000 You can try to convince people that you're wrong, stop doing this.

00:08:56.000 But when Bezos is $65 billion richer, Zuckerberg is $50 billion richer, and normal working families are seeing medical debt, student loan debt unchanged, their mortgage debt almost, and they're saying, is this system really in the best interest of myself?

00:09:10.000 So what do we do about this?

00:09:11.000 There's a lot of things we can unpack with that.

00:09:13.000 The first thing is we have to basically have a full-fledged prosecution of higher education in this country.

00:09:21.000 It's a disaster.

00:09:22.000 What we have done to young people is we have asked high school seniors, and that's why I wanted to do this with the high schoolers out here and with young people, is we ask the same question over and over again.

00:09:32.000 Hey, where are you going to school?

00:09:34.000 Where are you going to school?

00:09:35.000 Where are you going to school?

00:09:36.000 Rarely do we ask, hey, why are you going to school?

00:09:40.000 Why are you borrowing $80,000?

00:09:43.000 Why are you studying that?

00:09:45.000 Number one reason I get when I ask that question is, well, my parents are making me go to school.

00:09:49.000 It's a really bad reason to go borrow $80,000.

00:09:52.000 Second reason, to be perfectly honest, is they say, well, it's what everyone else does in my community.

00:09:56.000 It's what you have to do to succeed.

00:09:58.000 Little do they know that they only have a 59% chance of graduating on average national graduation rate.

00:10:03.000 Every college kid I ask, I say, can you name at least five kids that started with you in the freshman year, they didn't graduate?

00:10:08.000 Every hand always goes up.

00:10:09.000 Everyone knows people that drop out of school.

00:10:10.000 You know what happens to dropouts?

00:10:12.000 They're statistically the most likely to be addicted to drugs, perpetually in debt, and least likely to succeed.

00:10:17.000 So that 41% that doesn't graduate, it's not like they have successful re-entries into society.

00:10:21.000 Their morale is diminished.

00:10:23.000 Their entire world, their whole path or their career path is completely disrupted, and sometimes it takes a decade for them to get back.

00:10:31.000 So if I could say it as bluntly as I can, we have way too many people going to four-year college in this country.

00:10:35.000 Way too many people.

00:10:36.000 We need more plumbers, electricians, HVAC police officers, entrepreneurs, gap year, people that serve in our United States military, people that work with their hands.

00:10:44.000 And I find a lot more wisdom in the plumbing community than in the Ivy League intellectual community.

00:10:51.000 And so, and I get it, it's hard.

00:10:54.000 I came from the suburbs of Chicago. 0.99

00:10:55.000 I understand that if you didn't go to college, you were considered to be a dumb person. 0.98

00:10:59.000 I didn't go to college. 0.98

00:11:00.000 Okay.

00:11:01.000 And look, by the way, college is the right choice for some people.

00:11:04.000 I completely say that.

00:11:05.000 So for parents out there that want to throw whatever object is next to you at me, let me be very clear that it might be the right choice for your child.

00:11:12.000 It might.

00:11:13.000 Or it might not.

00:11:14.000 So don't think of this pathologically.

00:11:16.000 Please don't.

00:11:17.000 Because I find that all the time.

00:11:18.000 Sometimes parents come up to me with anger, like, how dare you say my kid shouldn't go to college?

00:11:22.000 I said, I never said that.

00:11:23.000 I said, prove to me why they should.

00:11:25.000 Like, make the argument, the case.

00:11:28.000 And also, by the way, you're going to play Russian roulette with your kids' values, by the way, if you send them to college.

00:11:33.000 They are going to come across evangelistic atheism.

00:11:35.000 They're going to come across an anti-American, anti-Western belief system of which we don't have to completely talk about again, but it's highly effective, very persuasive, and it creates unhappy people.

00:11:47.000 It just does.

00:11:49.000 So I think that the disruption that needs to happen is we need to ask ourselves the question: what is the goal of college?

00:11:55.000 I think that's the first question we have to ask.

00:11:56.000 Is it about ideological exploration or is it about skill development?

00:12:00.000 So we employ 160 people at Turning Point USA, mostly young people.

00:12:05.000 And I enjoy doing interviews still, and I come into some of these interviews, and we have some phenomenal workers.

00:12:10.000 That's the best employees in the entire space.

00:12:12.000 I really believe that.

00:12:13.000 And I ask the question, I say, what's your skill?

00:12:15.000 They say, well, I went to University of Tennessee.

00:12:17.000 I said, what's your skill?

00:12:19.000 They said, well, I have a degree in political science.

00:12:22.000 I said, no, no, what's your skill?

00:12:24.000 And they said, well, what do you mean?

00:12:26.000 I go, what can you do that a high school kid can't do?

00:12:29.000 They said, well, I have a political science degree.

00:12:30.000 I said, yeah, I got that point.

00:12:32.000 Like, what can you do that a high school kid can't do?

00:12:35.000 And their eyes expand.

00:12:36.000 He's like, I don't know.

00:12:38.000 I was like, why'd you even go?

00:12:41.000 And the answer is usually, I don't know.

00:12:44.000 Or my parents made me because I wanted to get the piece of paper.

00:12:46.000 Now, if I ask when we hire in the IT department, I say, what's your skill?

00:12:51.000 They say, I can code.

00:12:53.000 I understand computers.

00:12:55.000 I'm like, great, I don't.

00:12:56.000 You're hired.

00:12:57.000 You know what I mean?

00:12:59.000 Or when I'm hiring a plumber, it's like, what's your skill?

00:13:01.000 It's like, oh, I've been doing this for 30 years.

00:13:03.000 God bless our plumbers.

00:13:04.000 About plumbers, the whole world would be a disaster.

00:13:05.000 Think about it.

00:13:06.000 They're some of the most underappreciated people on the planet.

00:13:09.000 No, seriously.

00:13:12.000 I'll tell you a funny story about plumbers in a little bit, about how our society views them, which is just so awful.

00:13:18.000 And so the question should be: is it about ideological development?

00:13:22.000 Some people, just so you don't understand, parents out there have a complete misimpression of what college is.

00:13:26.000 Like whatever you think college is or what it used to be, it's not anymore.

00:13:30.000 Okay, I visited 155 campuses.

00:13:32.000 I represent 2,000 of them in our organization.

00:13:35.000 I've met more college kids, talked to more college professors.

00:13:38.000 College should be, and the ideal, and again, I buy into the idea of college completely, but it's not the idea is not happening, is to create tougher people for an uncertain world.

00:13:48.000 That's a good idea, right?

00:13:50.000 Doesn't happen.

00:13:51.000 It creates weaker people that are better at complaining.

00:13:54.000 That's what it does.

00:13:55.000 A college senior is far more mature than a high school senior.

00:13:58.000 No doubt.

00:13:59.000 I interview them for a living.

00:14:01.000 And I could tell you that employers across the country are in wide agreement.

00:14:04.000 Why is a high school senior far more mature than a college senior?

00:14:06.000 Because their parents are around.

00:14:07.000 That's why.

00:14:08.000 It's because there is an accountability measure.

00:14:11.000 In college, some colleges are the exception.

00:14:13.000 You've got the College of the Ozarks, you got Liberty, you got Hillsdale, you got some good colleges out there.

00:14:16.000 They're the exception, not the rule.

00:14:18.000 Most colleges do not challenge students to become a better version of themselves.

00:14:23.000 They don't.

00:14:24.000 Instead, they challenge students to become activists to try to tear down the system around them.

00:14:30.000 And so people, the question is: so, well, if you want to become a lawyer, doctor, all those sorts of things, college is absolutely the right reason for you.

00:14:35.000 But if you're like, I'm going to figure it out when I get there, that's a really bad reason to go to college.

00:14:40.000 I'm going to figure it out.

00:14:41.000 People say, well, I need the degree to get the job.

00:14:42.000 No, you don't.

00:14:43.000 You don't.

00:14:44.000 You think you do.

00:14:47.000 That's what people have told you.

00:14:49.000 I mean, people say, well, none of these corporations will hire me if I don't have a degree.

00:14:56.000 That's a prejudice that you've built into yourself.

00:14:58.000 We don't.

00:14:58.000 We hire more high school graduates than college graduates, and they're our best employees that we have at Turning Point.

00:15:02.000 I know limitless entrepreneurs that do the same.

00:15:05.000 In fact, business owners across the country are demanding less people that have come from the academy and more people that have come from real-world work.

00:15:12.000 Military veterans, for example, people that have worked their hands, entrepreneurs, community college graduates.

00:15:17.000 And so applicably, what does this look like?

00:15:19.000 I think that we need to encourage more young men in particular, and I'm going to build this out, to take gap years.

00:15:24.000 I'm a huge fan of gap years for a lot of different reasons.

00:15:28.000 Because the college system, and by the way, if you have a biblical worldview, you should be very careful sending your kid to college because everything that you try to tell your kid not to encounter is not just there, it is encouraged.

00:15:39.000 You know that most university campuses have men's dorms and girls' dorms right next to each other, right?

00:15:43.000 You know that, most campuses.

00:15:45.000 And that horrifies parents when they hear about it.

00:15:47.000 Just like, wait, what?

00:15:48.000 They're right next to them.

00:15:49.000 Yeah, they're right next to each other.

00:15:50.000 And some of them have even more shared communal spaces that we don't have to get into.

00:15:56.000 The drinking culture, all those sorts of things.

00:15:58.000 And so I think that our best asset in our country is our young people.

00:16:03.000 I really do.

00:16:04.000 And why would we send our young people to a system that has been proven to put them into debt, lower their aspirations, and just kind of give them the only option is to kind of go work for kind of a less than desirable Fortune 500 company.

00:16:18.000 You know how many entrepreneurial ideas that just disappear because kids get student debt?

00:16:22.000 The next generation of business owners, and number one reason I hear from kids, I have this idea, I want to do this, why don't you do it?

00:16:28.000 I got $55,000 in student loan debt.

00:16:30.000 I got $80,000 in student loan debt.

00:16:32.000 And so for high schoolers out there and high school parents, it's a very serious thing.

00:16:38.000 I can keep going, but I just want to make sure you get a little bit of a...

00:16:42.000 I want to make sure that this is a little bit of a discussion, not a lecture, right?

00:16:50.000 There's really no reason to mess this up.

00:16:53.000 And I'll just mess it up.

00:16:54.000 And I'm not trying, I mean, if you have a kid in college, I'm not trying to say you're doing the wrong thing or condemning or any of those.

00:16:58.000 That's not what I'm saying.

00:16:59.000 I'm simply, and I know exactly what I'm doing.

00:17:02.000 I'm trying to be intentionally a little bit more provocative than I need to be to start a conversation that I know will help you, your family, your kids in the country.

00:17:09.000 That's what I'm trying to do.

00:17:11.000 Because systems need to be challenged.

00:17:14.000 And it's really interesting.

00:17:15.000 You have a whole entire activist media that challenges our current government.

00:17:19.000 That's fine.

00:17:20.000 It challenges corporations, but like the one thing we're not allowed to talk about is higher education.

00:17:25.000 You think about that, right?

00:17:26.000 Who out there is repeatedly critiquing the fact that most colleges didn't offer tuition adjustments now that our kids are basically taking Zoom classes?

00:17:34.000 Right?

00:17:35.000 I mean, wouldn't like a nice price, like a little bit of a price adjustment would be nice for working families, right? 0.99

00:17:40.000 They're just looking at a screen.

00:17:42.000 And the reason they didn't adjust tuition is because they'd realize, because they would admit immediately they're charging your kid way too much to go to college.

00:17:48.000 That's why.

00:17:50.000 And so we look into this right now.

00:17:53.000 And so a lot of the kind of calamity of what's happening with young people, and it's playing out in every single way.

00:17:59.000 The birth rates, the alcoholism rates, the suicide rates, the depression rates.

00:18:03.000 It's a serious crisis, right?

00:18:05.000 And so that kind of framework is perfect for kind of a want to be socialist revolution because we need a lot of young people that are suffering materially.

00:18:13.000 Of course, it's tempting to want to steal other people's stuff to alleviate your own financial suffering.

00:18:17.000 I mean, it's hard.

00:18:18.000 My argument's really hard.

00:18:20.000 I get it.

00:18:20.000 I say it all the time.

00:18:21.000 My argument is stop complaining, go find someone to marry, be loyal to that person, stop doing drugs and drinking, and go work hard.

00:18:27.000 Like, okay, that's a really hard argument, right?

00:18:29.000 But actually, it's more of an opportunity than you might believe because I meet 18-year-olds that have lived in a world where they know nothing but hedonistic indulgence culture by the time they reach 18 years old.

00:18:41.000 And it's the most miserable generation in American history.

00:18:44.000 You understand that, right?

00:18:45.000 It is the unhappiest generation in American history. 1.00

00:18:48.000 Barna. 0.98

00:18:50.000 And so, but what's really fascinating to me is all the things we spend our time talking about in this country and the people who are about to inherit it are on pace to have less babies than any other generation, less happiness, less wisdom, and more debt.

00:19:06.000 And that's somehow an issue that we don't even discuss openly and honestly.

00:19:10.000 And I don't even consider this to be political, by the way.

00:19:12.000 I don't.

00:19:13.000 And so here's another couple things that we have to get very serious about.

00:19:17.000 And here's more of the parent-directed way.

00:19:19.000 It's how we raise our children.

00:19:20.000 And so I meet thousands and thousands of kids every single year.

00:19:24.000 And some parents do a phenomenal job.

00:19:26.000 Some parents need a little feedback.

00:19:31.000 And we need to be much more firm about teaching our kids self-control rather than self-esteem.

00:19:36.000 The self-esteem movement has done so much damage to our country, I can't even tell you.

00:19:40.000 This idea that you're perfect the way you are when you're 11 years old is so incredibly abusive to children.

00:19:46.000 I can't even tell you.

00:19:47.000 They're like, wait a second, I'm perfect.

00:19:47.000 Here's why.

00:19:49.000 I don't feel perfect.

00:19:50.000 I don't have to better myself.

00:19:52.000 Or I can do whatever I want.

00:19:53.000 It quickly turns into hedonistic nihilism, like almost immediately.

00:19:56.000 Instead, teaching self-control is way more important.

00:19:59.000 Here's how to control your impulses.

00:20:01.000 Here's how to become a master of yourself.

00:20:03.000 Here's how to mature.

00:20:05.000 And here's what ends up happening: the education system is hyper-feminized in our country, which is a total disaster.

00:20:11.000 And third, fourth, and fifth grade boys should not be sitting for eight hours a day.

00:20:14.000 It's just an awful idea.

00:20:15.000 Whoever came up with it should be fired.

00:20:16.000 You've got to completely disrupt the system.

00:20:19.000 Third, fourth, and fifth grade boys are hyperactive.

00:20:21.000 They can't focus.

00:20:22.000 And that's the way God hardwired them.

00:20:24.000 They should have much more involvement learning.

00:20:26.000 And even the literature that we teach on average in fifth grade classes doesn't resonate with young boys.

00:20:30.000 They're teaching Little House on the Prairie. 0.98

00:20:31.000 Okay, that's great for young women.

00:20:33.000 Young boys should be given a biography about Teddy Roosevelt.

00:20:36.000 Or, you know, young boys love biographies. 0.68

00:20:38.000 Young women like more narrative literature form. 0.99

00:20:41.000 And that's how we're hardwired.

00:20:43.000 So what ends up happening for a lot of different reasons is we have a crisis of men in this country.

00:20:48.000 And it's bad for women, it's bad for men, it's bad for the family, it's bad for the country.

00:20:51.000 Let me just be very clear. 0.62

00:20:53.000 Where now you have more single 30-year-old men than married 30-year-old men.

00:20:56.000 Can you believe?

00:20:58.000 Let me just reinforce that.

00:20:59.000 And so, what does that mean?

00:21:01.000 You guys know Peter Pan.

00:21:02.000 We have the lost boys in our country, where we have grown infants, basically.

00:21:06.000 And I don't mean any insults to any men here, but that's just what it is.

00:21:11.000 Where you have a generation of men that have no responsibility whatsoever.

00:21:16.000 And whether it's been subsidized by somebody else or they didn't take responsibility for themselves, that's the way it is.

00:21:21.000 And so when I go and speak to audiences and I challenge young men to take responsibility for their life, which is exactly what is needed, all of a sudden kind of a light turns on.

00:21:31.000 They're like, no one's really challenging me to do that.

00:21:33.000 I've always been told everything from kind of a kind of a victim kind of complaining like I'm the problem and I have to change.

00:21:39.000 And that over time creates a very sad set of circumstances where men are 20 times more likely to commit suicide, far more likely to die at work, far more likely to declare bankruptcy, unemployment for men is much higher, college graduation for men is much lower, master's, doctorate degrees, all these sorts of things.

00:21:54.000 Yet we tell these young men from the time they enter college, you understand there's a patriarchy and a horrible person.

00:21:58.000 They're like, all right, I'm going to cash out.

00:22:01.000 I mean, you're going to keep screaming in my face that I'm the worst person in the world.

00:22:05.000 One of two things happen.

00:22:07.000 They just completely exit from any sort of responsibility and sometimes kill themselves.

00:22:11.000 And the suicide rate should alarm all of you because it's beyond anything of comprehension. 0.69

00:22:16.000 Or they feminize themselves. 0.82

00:22:20.000 And that's basically, or they end up taking responsibility.

00:22:23.000 Those are the three things.

00:22:24.000 And you kind of play that out.

00:22:26.000 It's really, really bad for the country and for the culture we live in.

00:22:30.000 So what do we actually do about it?

00:22:31.000 Young men need to be challenged at 14, 15, and 16-year-old by their parents, by their pastors, by the leaders in their community.

00:22:37.000 The best thing that ever happened to me was, first of all, I didn't have a smartphone. 0.53

00:22:40.000 I think they're destroying our country.

00:22:42.000 And I think that parents should not give kids smartphones until you're ready to give them a weapon.

00:22:46.000 It's that simple.

00:22:48.000 Seriously.

00:22:49.000 If you're not ready to give your kid a firearm, don't give them a smartphone.

00:22:53.000 These smartphones are designed through the social media companies to be more addicting than cigarettes. 0.85

00:22:59.000 Young women in particular, it's even more dangerous than with young men.

00:23:02.000 I cannot convey, I've deleted all the social media apps off my phone. 1.00

00:23:06.000 I have seven and a half million followers on these combined platforms.

00:23:09.000 I know the people that have designed these companies.

00:23:11.000 These things are doing more damage to your children than if they were smoking cigarettes.

00:23:17.000 From how they communicate, how they interface with the world, how they do not have romantic relationships.

00:23:23.000 We are seeing driver's licenses go down by 20%.

00:23:26.000 We are seeing dating go down, marriage rates, you name it, because we have these digital pacifiers that are supposed to give us some sort of comfort.

00:23:33.000 Where all of a sudden you interface through the prism of some sort of box that's supposed to give you the next dopamine rush.

00:23:39.000 It's actually possible to be raised in this country without one.

00:23:43.000 I thank God every day that I grew up in high school without a digital pacifier.

00:23:47.000 It was awesome.

00:23:48.000 And we had like one of those flip phones where if I needed my parent, I could call one.

00:23:51.000 So if you're like, oh, I need to be in touch with my kid.

00:23:53.000 Okay, we don't need to be Snapchatting your kid, okay?

00:23:55.000 Like that's crazy.

00:23:58.000 And it's actually possible to communicate with people outside of that little box, that supercomputer that they give you.

00:24:04.000 We need to become more human in our country, less cyborg.

00:24:08.000 And it's a very important thing that we need to do.

00:24:10.000 And I think the other thing that, and I'm happy to, you know, just kind of stop and we can dialogue more on this, which is I'm actually doing, this is the best I've done so far.

00:24:26.000 So.

00:24:27.000 You just keep going.

00:24:28.000 Okay.

00:24:28.000 All right.

00:24:29.000 This is my best interview yet.

00:24:31.000 Yeah.

00:24:32.000 As you can tell, I've done a little bit of thinking about these issues, right?

00:24:35.000 I mean, I deal with this every day.

00:24:37.000 And I get this picture when I just get these emails from these young people and I see what they're dealing with.

00:24:41.000 And I want to just say this as a side note before I get back to the social media aspect of this.

00:24:47.000 Somebody in this room is dealing with mental health and depression.

00:24:50.000 And two things.

00:24:51.000 You're a lot tougher than you think.

00:24:53.000 Understand that.

00:24:54.000 You're a lot tougher than you think.

00:24:55.000 And you might not be convinced of it.

00:24:57.000 And you might not think that you're worthy, but somebody else actually needs you, believe it or not.

00:25:01.000 You might not have met that person yet.

00:25:03.000 You might not have communicated with that person.

00:25:05.000 And you might think, I'm worthless.

00:25:07.000 Well, you might think that, but somebody else doesn't.

00:25:10.000 So understand that, know that, and talk to somebody through what you're going through.

00:25:15.000 Communication is everything.

00:25:17.000 Self-harm always happens when dialogue stops, always.

00:25:20.000 We are speaking beings.

00:25:21.000 One of the reasons why suicide is up 175% in our country in the last 18 months is because we stopped talking to each other.

00:25:28.000 We stopped seeing each other.

00:25:29.000 We shut everything down.

00:25:30.000 We acted like there'd be no social cost to this.

00:25:33.000 And by the way, we are going to be paying the cost of these lockdowns for the next decade.

00:25:36.000 And the young people are going to have to decouple from this horrific decision that we made that I pray we'll never do again.

00:25:44.000 And so back to the kind of the social media technology piece.

00:25:48.000 I mean, there's good and bad in all things.

00:25:49.000 I mean, some people say, well, it's great.

00:25:50.000 I met my high school classmates.

00:25:52.000 I stay in touch with them.

00:25:52.000 I know birthdays.

00:25:53.000 I'm like, that's pretty a bad reason why to have these social media platforms.

00:25:56.000 Anyway, I guess there's some good things to these things.

00:25:58.000 And I mean, one of the good things is that we have millions of people that listen to our content.

00:26:02.000 You know, praise God.

00:26:02.000 And we've brought people the gospel through it and we are able to reach them.

00:26:05.000 However, if we never look at the other side of the coin and we don't look at, oh, wow, these tech companies are actually designing the feed after what gives you the highest rush of outrage, addiction.

00:26:19.000 I mean, they're designing it and they change the feed constantly.

00:26:22.000 And they say, oh, the algorithm is neutral.

00:26:24.000 No, algorithms are opinions written in code, is what they are.

00:26:28.000 There's somebody out there that is designing your child to think differently about the world.

00:26:35.000 Do you know the average kid spends seven and a half hours on their smartphone every single day?

00:26:39.000 Seven and a half hours.

00:26:40.000 We don't have humanity anymore.

00:26:42.000 We are now adjoined to some sort of tech oligarch of small group of people that don't share your values, by the way, just so you understand, that are impacting your kid more than the church and more than you are.

00:26:54.000 And so that should give everyone kind of a timeout.

00:26:56.000 And it's happening quicker than I think we can even understand.

00:26:59.000 These apps are more addictive.

00:27:01.000 They're more engaging than ever.

00:27:03.000 And so what do we do about it?

00:27:04.000 I already made the suggestion, don't give your kid a smartphone until you're ready to give them a firearm.

00:27:08.000 I think that maturity is very important.

00:27:09.000 You turn off push notifications on your phone.

00:27:11.000 It's a very important thing.

00:27:13.000 And I've done that.

00:27:15.000 It's played a very big role.

00:27:16.000 But even more than that, I think that there needs to be a recalibration and kind of a reassertion of what is a human being, right?

00:27:25.000 And a human being is, of course, first and foremost, broken and depraved by nature in the state of sin, and we need Jesus Christ as our ultimate and only salvation.

00:27:35.000 And the path that we are on right now in this country and this generation is one where we're going to encounter problems and difficulties that very well could put the entire system in jeopardy and could leave our country less free, could disintegrate our country, and is dealing with very real material, financial, cultural, and social costs around it.

00:27:56.000 And what are you, as you're traveling, what are you beginning to see in terms of, you know, an uptick, some signs of hope, some pockets of change and transformation, you go, that gives me hope, where the rest is deeply concerning.

00:28:09.000 What are you seeing that you go, that there is a bit hopeful?

00:28:13.000 Well, I think that the hopeful piece is that the solutions we have work.

00:28:18.000 And so when you have a married less, depressed generation, the solution is, well, go get married and stay loyal to that person and go have lots of children.

00:28:27.000 Like that's worked for a couple thousand years.

00:28:29.000 Like if you think you've cracked the code as being like this really like hip feminist and like I don't I don't need to get married.

00:28:35.000 Well, maybe it's going to work for you. 1.00

00:28:36.000 But like generally the rule is to get married and have children.

00:28:39.000 And that works really well and it's worked for a couple thousand years.

00:28:42.000 And in fact, I highly recommend it.

00:28:45.000 Like it's something that every human being should do, especially in a biblical context.

00:28:48.000 But I also think that the positives and the optimistic part of what we're seeing out there is that people have a yearning for learning right now.

00:28:58.000 And we've seen this in the last couple services where people are asking really informed questions.

00:29:03.000 They're coming with a reason.

00:29:05.000 Because when you see chaos and calamity, the response should not be outrage.

00:29:09.000 It should not be tearing things down.

00:29:10.000 It should be dive deeper into the understanding of exactly what is going on.

00:29:15.000 Understanding who Herbert Marcuse is in critical race theory.

00:29:19.000 Understanding who Milton Friedman was and what the market is.

00:29:22.000 Just always dive deeper when you're confused.

00:29:24.000 That's a really, really good rule.

00:29:26.000 And I'm seeing that.

00:29:27.000 And I see a re-engagement of the church on these sorts of issues, which is terrific.

00:29:33.000 And thank you for having me to be able to communicate this to you because it's not exactly a typical church service.

00:29:38.000 But I think we all agree, like, wow, if we don't get this thing with the next generation right, a lot of things are going to start to fall apart and crumble, right?

00:29:45.000 And so for the young people out there, everything I mentioned is legitimate.

00:29:50.000 And I just want to tailor it to the 25, 26, 27-year-olds, or 18 to 26-year-olds, or even high schoolers.

00:29:57.000 The country got shut down unnecessarily.

00:29:59.000 There's a few job opportunities.

00:30:01.000 We're all experiencing some sort of difficulty.

00:30:03.000 None of that is an excuse for you to play a victim, though.

00:30:05.000 Let me be very clear.

00:30:07.000 None of it.

00:30:09.000 I'm going to go communicate with the adults and continue to try to solve these problems.

00:30:13.000 But take responsibility for your life in this country because now it's our country.

00:30:17.000 It is.

00:30:18.000 And whether you're happy about it or whether you're uneasy about it, now you have to start making a sequence of decisions so that this life will be a little bit better for yourself and for future generations.

00:30:27.000 And so to be perfectly as blunt as I possibly can, stop complaining and start taking responsibility for every single action you make in your life.

00:30:36.000 What does responsibility look like?

00:30:37.000 It's easy.

00:30:38.000 We throw that word around a lot.

00:30:39.000 Here's the definition of responsibility.

00:30:42.000 If you don't have responsibility and you just take tomorrow off without telling anybody, no one will care.

00:30:50.000 If you do have responsibility, you take tomorrow off.

00:30:53.000 Somebody's life will be harder tomorrow.

00:30:56.000 That's responsibility.

00:30:57.000 If no one's life will be made harder tomorrow by your absence, you're responsible for nothing.

00:31:03.000 If somebody's life will be made harder tomorrow by your absence, you're responsible for something.

00:31:08.000 It could be a small group.

00:31:09.000 It could be a business.

00:31:09.000 It could be a family.

00:31:10.000 It could be a family member.

00:31:12.000 So, responsibility is the interconnectedness of human beings and loving your neighbor as yourself, a biblical idea.

00:31:19.000 When you're just in your basement sipping, you know, energy drinks endlessly to 3 a.m., not caring about your appearance, like the lost boys that we let happen far too often in our country, you have no responsibility at all whatsoever.

00:31:34.000 So, as Jordan Peterson says, sit up straight with your shoulders back, look at people in the eyes, make your goals sharp and clear, and stop doing one thing in your life you know that's bad for you.

00:31:43.000 Everybody in this room is doing one thing that you know that is bad for you.

00:31:47.000 Maybe it's drinking, maybe it's too much of a TV show, maybe it's a relationship.

00:31:52.000 Addition sometimes happens through subtraction.

00:31:54.000 And if you drop one thing in your life that's bad for you, you'd be amazed at how you could liberate from that addiction, from that focus.

00:32:02.000 And I think you can live a much more fulfilled life because of it.

00:32:04.000 You might have heard this.

00:32:04.000 It reminds me of something that John Maxwell said.

00:32:06.000 He said, you'll never change your life until you change something that you do daily.

00:32:12.000 Just one thing, just one simple thing, and you can see some really profound, you know, broader life change.

00:32:19.000 What else would you say to this next culture as we sort of head forward?

00:32:25.000 Yeah, I mean, how much time you got?

00:32:26.000 Jeez, there's a lot to cover.

00:32:28.000 So, for anyone over the age of 55, if you're not mentoring somebody under the age of 25, you're doing it wrong.

00:32:35.000 What are you doing with that wisdom that you have?

00:32:38.000 If you're over the age of 30 and you have wisdom, go find a mentee right now because they need you and they do not have the confidence to ask for it.

00:32:44.000 So, don't be wait to ask.

00:32:45.000 Do not be wait to be asked.

00:32:47.000 Stop it.

00:32:47.000 Don't do that.

00:32:48.000 I meet these people that they were Fortune 500 CEOs.

00:32:51.000 They had an incredible wealth of knowledge.

00:32:54.000 They're steeped in the Bible.

00:32:55.000 And I'm just like, are you mentoring anyone?

00:32:57.000 No one's ever asked.

00:32:57.000 I was like, really?

00:32:59.000 Like, go, these 16-year-olds are not taught to go ask for mentors.

00:33:03.000 So go find a 16-year-old in your church and be like, hey, what do you have an interest in?

00:33:08.000 And they will talk to you because they're going through a lot right now.

00:33:12.000 And so the other thing I encourage is if you're young, go ask for a mentor.

00:33:16.000 So it's not just, that's not an excuse.

00:33:18.000 It's an amazing kind of intergenerational wisdom that can be communicated to non-family members being mentors.

00:33:23.000 It's very important.

00:33:24.000 There's an inherent rebellion when you're 17.

00:33:26.000 My parents don't know it.

00:33:27.000 But all of a sudden, when kind of a semi-father figure comes into the picture or a semi-mother figure comes into the picture that's non-family related, that's rooted in biblical wisdom, that has a skill in something you care about.

00:33:38.000 It could be technology, computing, or carpentry.

00:33:41.000 I can't communicate to you how effective that is to the stewardship of young Christians.

00:33:46.000 And necessary, and it happens so rarely, it stuns me.

00:33:50.000 And it shows people that you care.

00:33:52.000 It shows that you're one phone call away from being able to walk you through what you want to do.

00:33:57.000 And so kind of back to the education piece and kind of asking the question of what should we do with young people and how should we prepare them for this ever chaotic world.

00:34:06.000 Of course, ask the question, hey, why are you going to college?

00:34:08.000 Not where are you going to college?

00:34:10.000 And also just a thought experiment.

00:34:11.000 And every family should do this.

00:34:13.000 Tally up the entire cumulative cost of what college will cost your family financially.

00:34:17.000 Could be $100,000.

00:34:18.000 It could be $200,000.

00:34:19.000 It could be $250,000.

00:34:20.000 And ask yourself the question, if I put this in a very conservative money market account over four years, what would that look like?

00:34:27.000 And if my kid went and worked for four years and acted ethically and did the right thing, where would they be in four years versus four years of going to this university and all that money disappearing?

00:34:37.000 And a lot of families, when I communicate, they're like, oh, wow, that $250,000 would turn into $300,000.

00:34:42.000 The four years, they'd have a job, pay rent, be debt-free.

00:34:45.000 And if they still went to church, I'd be proud of them.

00:34:47.000 And I'd be okay with that.

00:34:49.000 And can I just speak something as honestly as I possibly can here?

00:34:52.000 And I mean no offense by this.

00:34:54.000 But parents, you need to hear this.

00:34:55.000 The number one reason why kids go to college is because of you.

00:35:00.000 And it's because of your egos.

00:35:03.000 And I mean this as lovingly as I can.

00:35:05.000 It's because parents are unwilling to turn to their neighbor and tell their neighbor, yeah, my kid's not going to college and I'm okay with that.

00:35:13.000 That's a conversation that is like a no-fly zone.

00:35:16.000 Instead, it's like, no, I'm a proud Stanford mom.

00:35:19.000 Okay, well, how's that working? 0.99

00:35:20.000 Well, my kid hates the country and he changed his gender, but besides that, everything's great. 1.00

00:35:30.000 That's, you know, it's sad, though, isn't it? 1.00

00:35:35.000 It is sad.

00:35:36.000 Well, I mean, look, especially if you're talking about someone who has, you know, you've got a lifetime invested in these little lives.

00:35:45.000 Especially if you're a child of God, a follower of Christ, you've done the best you can, though imperfectly, to try to instill ideas that are eternal, ideas that long after you're gone, they're still going to work in the life of your children.

00:35:58.000 And then you, you know, again, we succumbing to pressure from the outside as a parent, you go, well, like, I couldn't stomach the fact that we would be one of those that our kid didn't go.

00:36:09.000 You know, not only is it to school, but where specifically is it to school?

00:36:15.000 And then only to have your kid, you know, just completely scrambled in that way and say, I kind of, there was a stewardship granted to me and my child, my children.

00:36:24.000 And at the end, because of pressures not divine, I have great regret, great, great regret, and some, in some cases, some terrible loss.

00:36:37.000 You've shared in times some very specific, practical, I mean, super practical details for the young kid as it relates to the gap year.

00:36:46.000 Yes.

00:36:46.000 So like specifically, they show up here.

00:36:49.000 Yeah, what's your question?

00:36:50.000 That's a great.

00:36:51.000 You know, so share a few of those because I think they're super practical, but very important, very helpful.

00:36:56.000 So here's why I'm a fan of a gap year is that you only have that kind of youthful energy and excitement once.

00:37:03.000 And no, it's true.

00:37:04.000 I mean, and you might have it again.

00:37:05.000 I mean, tell me how that happens.

00:37:08.000 But like when you're 18, 19, and 20-year-old, there really is kind of the I can conquer the world mentality.

00:37:13.000 And some of that is not good.

00:37:15.000 Some of it's awesome, actually.

00:37:17.000 Some of the greatest companies and greatest innovations that we all enjoy today were from people in their early 20s that took massive risks.

00:37:24.000 And I can sympathize with that because I had an idea when I was 18 and I didn't go to college and I took the risk and it's grown into something bigger than I ever could have imagined.

00:37:33.000 If I would have went to college, it never would have happened.

00:37:37.000 And so here's the thing that I encourage for gap years.

00:37:39.000 So just you understand, I originally took a gap year and it's been eight and a half gap years, right?

00:37:44.000 And people say you're going to go back to school.

00:37:46.000 I'm like, yeah, maybe, sure.

00:37:47.000 Like, I don't know.

00:37:48.000 I mean, probably not.

00:37:50.000 But if you're like, yeah, maybe a gap year sounds right for me.

00:37:57.000 Find something that you really care about.

00:38:00.000 Find somebody in your church or community that's really good at that.

00:38:04.000 Dress nice.

00:38:06.000 Go to bed before the next, you know, the night before early.

00:38:10.000 Look at them straight in the eyes and say, take a chance on me.

00:38:12.000 I will work harder than any person you have working for me.

00:38:15.000 I'll work below minimum wage.

00:38:16.000 Please give me a chance.

00:38:18.000 And I'm telling you right now, adults, it'll be like a hurricane.

00:38:20.000 They'll be like, of course I'll hire you.

00:38:22.000 I've never met someone like this.

00:38:23.000 And they will give you a job that would have taken you four years and a million interviews to get. 0.84

00:38:28.000 I'm telling you, it's so rare to have that kind of confidence where a young person dresses nicely, looks in the eye, and they'll say, I'll sweep the floors. 0.98

00:38:36.000 I will do whatever it takes.

00:38:38.000 And any entrepreneur out there can sympathize with that kind of gritty attitude.

00:38:42.000 I've done this recently, where a young man from Thousand Oaks, California, who's the son of my pastor, Rob McCoy, 18 years old, was being told by everyone he has to go to college, and God bless his parents for believing in him.

00:38:54.000 He's 18 years old doing the Mr. Miyagi thing for us at Turning Point USA, you know, kind of stuff and shirts.

00:39:00.000 But he's earning a good wage, no debt, has his own apartment, meeting amazing people.

00:39:04.000 He listens to Jordan Peterson podcasts and our podcast every day.

00:39:08.000 The kid has more wisdom than any other college professor I've ever met at 18 years old.

00:39:16.000 And he has found out what he wants to do and doesn't want to do in his life.

00:39:20.000 He never wants to work on a shipping dock ever again.

00:39:23.000 And now, why is that important?

00:39:25.000 Because if you're working at a young age, all of a sudden you'll figure out quickly if you love it or you don't love it.

00:39:32.000 College just kind of insulates you from that.

00:39:34.000 It like immunizes you from any sort of idea because when you go and find that job or that internship or that, please give me a chance.

00:39:41.000 Please take a risk on me because I want to be a computer IT.

00:39:44.000 I want to be a doctor, whatever it is, right?

00:39:46.000 You'll see the workflow.

00:39:47.000 You'll see the culture.

00:39:49.000 And you'll either lean in or disengage.

00:39:51.000 You're like, I don't know if I want to do that.

00:39:52.000 That's the best thing.

00:39:52.000 That would have saved you so much time and energy.

00:39:55.000 I can't tell you how many kids that graduate from college, they go to places like, I found out the hard way.

00:40:00.000 I didn't like this.

00:40:01.000 And that could have been an easier way to go about it.

00:40:05.000 And the other thing is this, which is the most important thing that kind of in the marketplace that I have found that is the differentiator, which is what, if you are willing to work harder than the person next to you and act ethically with integrity, those two things are so hard to find.

00:40:23.000 And it's really interesting.

00:40:25.000 The kids that don't go to college end up being always having to prove themselves.

00:40:29.000 And I'm in that boat, by the way.

00:40:30.000 Everywhere I go, people are like, oh, you didn't go to college.

00:40:32.000 I shouldn't listen to you.

00:40:33.000 I'm like, I'm going to prove you wrong.

00:40:34.000 That's why I give 330 speeches a year.

00:40:36.000 It's why we speak, you know, I sleep four hours a night.

00:40:38.000 I do it because everyone tells me I can't do it.

00:40:41.000 And I'm like, okay, fine.

00:40:44.000 But if I would have went to Stanford, I probably wouldn't have that kind of grit, to be honest with you.

00:40:47.000 Or Harvard.

00:40:48.000 I would have been like, oh, I went to Stanford and Harvard to go listen to how great I am.

00:40:52.000 So there's an element to kind of grittiness that's created there that sometimes I think gets kind of insulated, but also applicable steps, which is, and this is just a rule, and the Bible talks about this so clearly, just be so careful taking debt, guys.

00:41:04.000 I mean, debt is the slavery of the free.

00:41:06.000 There's verse after verse in Proverbs about the danger of indebtedness.

00:41:11.000 And we kind of just sign away the debt with young people that is so horrifying when it's $100,000, $150,000, $175,000 in debt before they're even 22 years old, before they even can comprehend these numbers.

00:41:24.000 And so, you know, just go through the same sort of financial management you would getting a car or a home when you kind of take those applicable steps.

00:41:31.000 And maybe community college is the answer.

00:41:33.000 Maybe more AP classes is the answer.

00:41:36.000 Maybe a state school versus an out-of-state school is the answer.

00:41:39.000 You know, maybe I'm going to go to a technical school and get a skill for 18 months.

00:41:42.000 By the way, just so, you know, there is such a massive gap right now in the skills in our country.

00:41:47.000 Computer engineers, IT.

00:41:49.000 In fact, there's such a skill gap that the politicians like, we have to continue to import people from India that actually have these skills.

00:41:56.000 Meanwhile, 57% of our college graduates are studying psychology or the soft social sciences, which is fine, but it's a great way to get a job at Starbucks.

00:42:06.000 It's a really bad way to get a high-paying job that actually has a skill.

00:42:11.000 And again, it's going to be all about kind of skill development.

00:42:14.000 And the other thing is this, and I want to kind of comment on the kind of the church vein here, which is kind of in the college landscape, the fastest growing religion is atheism.

00:42:22.000 And I am approached by more atheists on college campuses that try to persuade me to believe in nothing than Christians that approach me that try to persuade, that they don't know me, that try to tell me about the good news of Jesus Christ.

00:42:35.000 So if you send your kid to college, there's a chance that all of a sudden you will never recognize their value system or them again.

00:42:42.000 And everyone needs to understand that truth.

00:42:45.000 I get thousands of emails of parents, and it pains me.

00:42:49.000 Charlie, I sent my kids to school and they won't talk to me anymore because I'm a Christian and I'm a conservative.

00:42:56.000 And I'm like, I'm sorry.

00:42:58.000 And because that kind of ingratitude is taught quite often at these university campuses.

00:43:03.000 And so anyway, I just want to be kind of very clear about this.

00:43:07.000 The goal should be, how do we create a country where our young people can live quiet and peaceful lives like it tells us in 1 Timothy.

00:43:15.000 And so we have to challenge our young men to marry earlier and marry women and have, be loyal to those women, which is a rarity in the landscape, make good choices and have many children.

00:43:31.000 And for young women, We should be very clear. 0.53

00:43:33.000 Whatever you want to do, you should have the freedom to do. 0.60

00:43:36.000 But it's okay to get married before the age of 30.

00:43:38.000 Like, it's okay.

00:43:39.000 And I meet so many young women.

00:43:41.000 They're like, I'll get married after I have a really successful career.

00:43:45.000 Okay.

00:43:46.000 And all of a sudden they realize they're 30 and all the good men are gone.

00:43:50.000 I hear this all the time.

00:43:52.000 All the time.

00:43:52.000 Like you wouldn't believe.

00:43:54.000 It's like, okay. 0.99

00:43:55.000 I mean, I think that there was something that kind of worked in the 1950s where all of a sudden the birth rates were going up and families were flourishing and we valued the nuclear family and fatherlessness wasn't 77% as it is in the black community. 0.91

00:44:09.000 And so there's a responsibility crisis in this country. 0.94

00:44:14.000 There is.

00:44:15.000 Where people are saying other people should be responsible for me.

00:44:19.000 One of the things that has just driven me nuts the last couple weeks and months is where they say like, well, everything is about being safe.

00:44:26.000 Drives me out of control.

00:44:28.000 And I say, I'm all for safety.

00:44:30.000 I'm not for recklessness.

00:44:32.000 But there's a balance in all things.

00:44:34.000 If we were just about safety, speed limits should be 10 miles an hour.

00:44:36.000 They should be.

00:44:38.000 They should be, right? 0.64

00:44:39.000 We have high speed limits because we want the liberty to get places quickly so that we can live more efficient lives.

00:44:45.000 I mean, 40,000 people die on the road every single year because of high speed limits.

00:44:49.000 A lot of that could be mitigated with 10 mile an hour speed limits.

00:44:52.000 Instead, what's always made our country different is not safety.

00:44:54.000 I mean, in prison, you're safe, right?

00:44:56.000 You've got three meals a day, but you have no liberty.

00:44:58.000 It's about being brave and being wise.

00:45:00.000 That's what the Bible tells us to be, right?

00:45:02.000 Being safe.

00:45:03.000 Okay, make choices that are okay for yourself.

00:45:06.000 But this idea that all of a sudden we are going to micromanage every single decision and you're going to be comfortable and safe is so unbelievably misleading and it's dangerous.

00:45:17.000 Because what has always made decent Western civilization different is a commitment to the brave, a commitment to the wise, and a commitment to the reason, not a commitment to the automatic that we're just going to say that, well, we can keep you safe.

00:45:33.000 Like maybe you can't.

00:45:34.000 There's a lot of other ways to die than besides this virus.

00:45:37.000 There's a lot of other ways.

00:45:39.000 Heart disease.

00:45:40.000 I'm not diminishing the virus.

00:45:41.000 Trust me.

00:45:41.000 I've lost a dear friend to it, okay?

00:45:43.000 But this kind of idea that all of a sudden we're going to micromanage people's behaviors at the expense of so many other people is just foolish and wrong and backwards.

00:45:52.000 And so the other kind of point to this with young people out there that I highly encourage every student out there is the amount of opportunity afforded you at this period of time is incredible. 0.76

00:46:05.000 It really is.

00:46:06.000 We have a whole generation that goes around playing the victim.

00:46:09.000 It's the oppression Olympics.

00:46:10.000 Feel sorry for me because of all these sorts of things.

00:46:12.000 Okay, whatever.

00:46:13.000 It's actually your country to dominate.

00:46:16.000 Like, it is easier than ever because there are so many people that just are kind of in the professional complaining industry, like Colin Kaepernick.

00:46:23.000 He does it professionally, right?

00:46:24.000 His whole thing is just complaining.

00:46:27.000 Everything, right?

00:46:29.000 If you take risks and you apply yourself, it's incredible what you're able to achieve in this country.

00:46:33.000 It really is.

00:46:34.000 And I want to challenge you to that because it's an optimistic message.

00:46:37.000 It's a message that whatever you think you can, whatever your dream is you have for yourself, do so in the pursuit with biblical values and for the good of the kingdom.

00:46:46.000 But only in a matter, and I'll give, I'm look, I'm living proof of this.

00:46:50.000 I'm a kid that didn't go to college from the suburbs of Chicago, who's now 26 years old, 2,000 campuses, 160 people on staff.

00:46:58.000 We've been blessed to have, you know, $31 million operating budget, two podcasts today, soon-to-be national radio show, and Friends of the President of the United States.

00:47:06.000 Only in America is a story like that possible.

00:47:09.000 Only in America.

00:47:10.000 Incredible.

00:47:12.000 It's incredible.

00:47:14.000 Well, we've closed each of our services in prayer, but I would love if you would close the service in prayer.

00:47:21.000 And would you pray, you know, for this next generation?

00:47:24.000 And just as you feel, I'd know we spoke in the back, and you get these emails about kids that say, look, if it weren't for your podcast, if it weren't for what you just said, I would have taken my life.

00:47:34.000 I did feel completely hopeless.

00:47:36.000 We get a lot of those.

00:47:37.000 So would you just close our, by the way, as we mentioned earlier, we've got, we'll have four or five almost hours of content.

00:47:47.000 This is one specific thing that Charlie really wanted to talk about, and we kept it for this audience because we felt like we might have the broadest sort of reach of the young people and the parent.

00:47:56.000 But we've talked about all kinds of things that matter right now for the church in this day and age.

00:48:03.000 And we'll have it all available for you.

00:48:05.000 But so would you just close our weekend in prayer over this next generation and those even maybe struggling right now in sort of that deep, depressive state?

00:48:15.000 Can I just say one thing, sir?

00:48:17.000 Which is if anyone is dealing with that sort of self-harm problem, my email is always available, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:48:26.000 And remember, you're a lot tougher than you think.

00:48:27.000 Amen.

00:48:28.000 And there's a reason why you're here.

00:48:30.000 Amen.

00:48:30.000 And don't try to convince yourself or have somebody else convince you that that is not true.

00:48:35.000 And there is an epidemic right now of suicide.

00:48:38.000 And every parent has to recognize this, and every grandparent has to get very serious about it.

00:48:42.000 And everything I talk about contributes to it.

00:48:45.000 So please take that very seriously.

00:48:47.000 And I've lost seven friends to suicide in just the last three years.

00:48:50.000 And that should take everyone pause and say, that's no longer acceptable.

00:48:54.000 You say that in California we've lost more to suicide.

00:48:56.000 More young people to suicide than from the virus, yeah, in California.

00:48:59.000 So, okay, let's do some prayer.

00:49:01.000 So, dear Lord, thank you for this incredible country that we live in.

00:49:06.000 Thank you for this church service and your incredible pastor.

00:49:08.000 And thank you for this congregation for warmly welcoming us this weekend.

00:49:14.000 We pray for our young people.

00:49:15.000 They're experiencing a lot of difficulty and struggle.

00:49:18.000 We pray for those people that are just thinking in the terrain of self-harm that you might give them comfort and that you might give them direction and that they might find the mentorship that they need.

00:49:30.000 And we pray for the adults out there that they may make informed and wise choices for their children and with their children and that they may take the education seriously.

00:49:38.000 And we thank you for the gifts that have been given to us and afforded to us that we might acknowledge those every single day.

00:49:45.000 And we thank you for sending your son, Jesus, the ultimate salvation.

00:49:49.000 And we pray that we might be a wise and brave church in this moment in our country.

00:49:54.000 In Jesus' name, amen.

00:49:55.000 Amen.

00:49:56.000 Amen.

00:49:56.000 Thank you so much.

00:49:57.000 Thank you, God.

00:50:01.000 If you guys want to support us at Turning Point USA, the hundreds of thousands of freedom fighters on high school and college campuses across the country, go to tpusa.com, tpusa.com.

00:50:12.000 Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:50:16.000 If you guys want to win a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine, type in Charlie Kirk show to your podcast provider, hit subscribe and give us a five-star review.

00:50:23.000 Thank you guys so much for listening.

00:50:24.000 God bless.

00:50:25.000 Again, please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:50:29.000 Thank you again.

00:50:30.000 Talk to you soon.

00:50:31.000 God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - October 18, 2020

Why Young People Are Turning to Cultural Marxism — And How To Fix It

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript