Charlie Kirk’s Personal Story | EP 542

Looking back from your position of wisdom, what do you have to say to the American public about cookie advocacy? Well, I should have been advocating for, you know, reduction in hamburger or steak prices. The funny undercurrent of that is that's kind of what started my political advocacy. I know. It appeared to me that you were of that American evangelical stripe. When I met you, I thought, okay, so that's Charlie's Cauldron, the matrix out of which he emerged. Maybe cauldron is not the right metaphor, but I'm curious. think that your political rebellion took a conservative force.

Yes. The non-political, non-historical literature that we were being assigned was what I call pre-woke, very much anti-colonialist, anti-western, that we are the contaminants on the world, that we are polluting other tribes. I've learned a lot of things in the last 10 Years that have shocked me so bad I don't know how to recover exactly. And one of them was that I'm talking to Charlie Kirk and Charlie came out of nowhere 10 years ago and built the world's most influential organization of young conservatives. And he did that from scratch. He did that by going to universities

pretty much single-handedly setting up card tables offering to discuss and debate all the Issues that weren't being discussed and debated in these places set up for exactly that reason. and iterating as he grew, establishing conservative clubs on campuses all across the United States, building a grassroots organization, learning how to debate despite the fact that he hadn't gone to college, and actually playing the role on campus colleges that the professors in the classes were supposed To play. And so why watch my discussion with Charlie? Well, to learn who he is, to listen to how he did

this. You know, he had a vision and a calling and he found his way and made it spectacularly successful while he was still very young and has ended up playing a very significant cultural role uh transformative role that is by no means over. And so I think the podcast is interesting in and of itself because the story is so compelling, but it also Contains many lessons. you might say, for those who are searching for a productive, adventurous, romantic way forward. So, join me in my discussion with Charlie Kirk, founder and leader of Turning Point USA,

the world's largest conservative youth organization. So, I've got a gotcha question for you. So, now now you're warranted. Okay. Okay. So, you know that Robert F. Kennedy and Mett Oz and I suppose Jay Badacheria too Are all hands on deck to restore American health and that likely the biggest problem that's confronting us is insulin resistance. I agree with that. too much way too much sugar and obesity and all that goes along with it. But insulin resistance just it's just devastating. It makes you old. It makes you diabetic. It's it's terrible. It's it interferes with your

cognition. It increases the probability that you'll get Alzheimer's. Um and That's all linked to carbohydrate excess intake. Right. You agree with all that? I agree with that. Okay. And yet when you were in high school, one of the first things you did to begin your political career was agitate for a what? Reduction or stabilization of the price of cookies. We were against cookie inflation. Yeah. So looking back from your position of wisdom 13, 14 years later, what do you have to say to the American public about cookie advocacy? What I should I should have been

advocating for, you know, reduction in the hamburger or steak prices. You see, that would have been a much better health approach. But, uh, all kidding aside, the the the the funny undercurrent of that is that's kind of what started my political advocacy. I know. I know it is. I kind of look back, you know, even, you know, just 13 years ago when, you know, cookie prices were the number one, you know, concern. This Was before Door Dash. This before all that. I look at these high school kids now, but they're able to order into high

school. They have entire cubby rooms of like half of the high school class that is just getting takeout. So, in our high school in the service of Chicago, the biggest thing was these basically homemade cookies that nearly tripled in price over the course of a year. So, we started students against cookie inflation, which was a a rather Righteous effort, I might say. How old were you? I was at that time 16, 17 years old. 16. And how how much before that do you think your interest in the political developed? I definitely had an interest. Um

I would I'd first I'd say I was really fascinated by American history, why we were a great country. It was hard to not be politically oriented or opinionated based on the time that I grew up in. Understand the time and place. When I Was in eighth grade, this guy named Barack Obama came onto the political scene from Chicago and everybody had an opinion about him. In fact, he became Where were you? Where were you at the time? I was in the suburbs of Chicago. So, Wheeling Arlington Heights area and Obama was a homegrown, which he

really wasn't, but he was, you know, a senator from Illinois. A homegrown almost quasi messianic political figure. I mean, you remember how it captured the nation Times 10 in the Chicagoland area. Remember Obama did his victory speech in Grant Park in downtown Chicago. That's where he celebrated his victory in 2008. And so it was just an all-encompassing almost um you know political moment where it was it was at very high social cost to be disagreeable with the rise of Obama in 2008. And mind you, I was a seventh or eighth grader at the time and

actually going into nth grade. And so I decided at my very best to push back. Oh, really? Is he going to fulfill all these promises? is he really going to be able to bring utopia? And admittedly, I was rather clumsy and shallow in my capacity to be able to articulate those beliefs. But I had something in me that wanted to push back against the the orthodoxy of the time. Okay. I met you. Do you remember when we first met? It was two, was it 2016, 2017? Might have been 17, 18. I I came to Toronto

because I and still to this day, this is Correct. I was so moved by your lectures and your videos that they significantly changed my life and I really wanted to meet you more than anything else. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you were kind enough to make time for that. Yeah. Well, I remember that meeting and I I you know, I remember trying to figure out who you were because of what you were doing and the fact that you had this remarkable organizational capacity. But what I'm interested in now, you know, when when You is is is is

what I'm very interested in trying to figure out what inclined you to take the path that you took. Now, you said, okay, so you said Obama, but you said something else at the same time. You said that you had been reading American history. Okay. And that you were concerned with, interested in, and convinced by, I suppose, all of those this issue of what made America great. Okay. So now while those so this is interesting and worth taking apart because for decades certainly since the 60s the typical pathway for someone young who was assessing the history

of his or her country would have been to read it through a highly critical lens. So for example, I remember when I was 13 or 14, so that would have been se mid70s, um I was reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and some of the uh so-called New journalists. And uh they're not they weren't of the left exactly the way you would conceptualize the left now. They were more like radical literary figures I would say. But the mid70s ethos certainly was to read history sociology critically. And I don't mean you were being uncritical. I

mean to take take an anti-establishment stance. Like in the 60s that was all well anti-establishment, free love, the sexual revolution is coming, everyone's Going to be free. By the time the 70s came along, which was the millu I was embedded in, all of the optimism of the 60s had pretty much vanished, but all of the cynicism 100% remained. Now you though, interestingly enough, in Chicago, and this would be mid 2000, so 2008, 2009, right? Right. near the end of the two 20 thou or the first decade of the 2000s, you were reading American history and

and as you said in the height of the Obama craze fervor. Sure. Um but your take was positive and patriotic. Correct. So why why do you think that was like what do you think it what made you different? Like when I met you, you you were very, I would say, relatively sheltered still and very very straight laced. And from the Canadian perspective, you know, you were you were of the it appeared to me that you were of that American evangelical stripe, which we have some Of in Alberta, not a lot. It's not really a Canadian

thing. And so when I met you, I thought, okay, so that's Charlie's uh that's that's the cauldron, the matrix out of which he emerge. Maybe cauldron is not the right metaphor, but I'm curious like why do you think that your political rebellion took a conservative form when that isn't it's not common for young people and it certainly wasn't the pattern of the time From say 1965 till well probably till about you till about when you correct were adolescent. So that that's a phenomenal analysis and question. Let me just add to it. The the literature, the

non-political, non-historical literature that we were being assigned in sixth, 7th, 8th grade was what I call pre-woke. It was almost there. And so it was it was like books that come to mind is a book called like things fall apart. I don't know if you're familiar with this Book. Shininoa Okabi, I think. Yeah, exactly. I think it was the main character was Okonquo. I could be wrong. I'm just drawing from like 13 14 years. Basically the entire premise of the book based on my memory is that there are these this you know wonderful tribe and

they all get along in Africa and these evil colonialists come in and things fall apart and there's internal strife and the end of the book is basically the summary of all of these relationships of These evil colonialists that say and you know here's the history of just the under you know subsaharan Africa basically dismissing all of the complexities and the beauties of you know this specific right so it's kind of a testament to rouso But it was written by an African in that book. Correct. And I I again I'm drawing from almost a decade old

memory, but I remember the discussions we'd have in class were were very much anti-colonialist, Anti-western, that we are the contaminants on the world, that we are polluting other tribes. And again, mind you, that we're in eth grade discussing this. So I don't know what post structuralism is or postmodernism is, but it was pre-woke. We weren't quite there, though. And so from the historical standpoint, it was not 1619 project, but it was we're going to spend a whole month on slavery and we're going to spend f three days on the founding. Right. And did you spend

any of the time when you were studying slavery assessing the fact that the UK was the only country that's ever existed in the history of the world that spent what two centuries and a tremendous proportion of its treasury eradicating slavery around the world at the behest of Protestant Christians because that's the story and we let me I never remember knowing the name Wilburforce Wilburforce yeah see this is A very interesting thing you know I actually didn't come come across. This is so strange, but life is very strange. I didn't come across the name Wilburforce till

I was probably in my 40s. Isn't that amazing? It's beyond comprehension. I didn't get to know him until the last 5 years. Last five years. Is that right? A even is that even the political I might have heard it, but not until someone looked at me seriously said, "You have to study this guy. This Is a preacher. This is a man of faith that led to the abolition of slavery probably the entire under impossible conditions. He devoted his whole life to it. And the the link between that and the religious idiation is rock solid rock.

It's it's one to one. Absolutely. And it's also the case that his ideas wouldn't have fallen on fertile ground because they did relatively like when you can make a radical cultural shift in one lifetime which is no time at all Historically you know that you're at the forefront of ideas whose time has come and that was clearly the case for Wilburforce and he certainly is one of those people who stood up against the greedy self-centered and and malevolent ethos of his time But the UK swung around behind them impossibly rapidly and then with their full

might. And it is it's it you know I've learned a lot of things in the last 10 years that have shocked me So bad I don't know how to recover exactly. And one of them was that the public school system was set up by fascists on the Prussian military model. I just I've never been able to figure out exactly what to do with that. They were literally trying to make thoughtless worker drones, desk workers. That's what bureaucrat means. Yeah. Well, or or factory workers, right? And it what what that in itself wasn't so bad because

the country was Industrializing. But right underneath that was the idea that while you were doing that, it was necessary to pretty much stamp out or fail to develop anything that would produce any kind of creative entrepreneurship. It's like, okay, that's uh hard to swallow. And then when I read about how the food pyramid was developed, that's just beyond comprehension. I I don't know if that's the worst crime ever committed in the United States, but it's up there. And then this the next mystery is Wilburforce is another mystery of that magnitude. And and espe even you

might say particularly on the left. It's like, okay, you guys, you're you're for the oppressed, which I don't buy for a second, but especially because I've watched in the last 10 years the lefties sell out the poor worldwide to the climate apocalypse mongers. And that's just been a catastrophe for places like Africa, like Beat Wade has been so what Forthright in observing. But the fact that slavery and reparations, all of that, the unfair founding of the United States has been a central dogma of the radical leftists. They blame slavery on the west. And the fact

that the radical types have control over the education system means that no one even educated in a conservative millu knows who the hell Wilburforce was. And I I don't I just don't or or Thaddius Stevens or the heroism of John Quincy Adams. Those Would be, you know, some main protagonist characters for the abolition of slavery here in America. And so when I was in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade, something in me, and I don't quite know, my parents very patriotic, but not political. Patriotic, but not political. They're conservative, but we were not a political family,

but very patriotic. Something in me desired to try to find the other side of the story, to try to push back a little bit from the the Incessant narrative that was being built. And I do want to make sure this is clear. We were not yet at the place where the the the teachers were saying America was racist. In fact, it was actually much more insidious than that. And so that even in 2008 that that's no occurring. In fact, I could make at least in my environment. I could make an argument though that what they

were doing when I was in high school is actually long-term much more effective To create revolutionaries for the left than what they're doing now because it really didn't warrant that much of a backlash. It wasn't it wasn't overly provocative. They weren't saying to the white kids in class, "Hey, go sit in this side of the class and black kids on this side of the class." Yeah. Well, those things always happen one tiny step at a time, of course. But when I was being schooled, there was no parents showing up at schoolboard meetings about Critical race

theory. Now, these elements were laced throughout all the curriculum, right? And it took a very discerning eye. And for whatever reason, you know, how I was raised or just something in me around 10th or 11th grade, I asked the question. I said, 'Look, we have spent an entire month on slavery. Totally get it. Terrible thing. But we spent so little time on the brilliance of the founders and what they've created and the greatest Political document in human history and what went into that. And it was an underemphasis on the heroism and the courage and the

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the poor and the oppressed, you know, and then you have to be discerning there because there are people who are poor and oppressed as a consequence of their own idiocy. And that's not so uncommon as you know in your own life by watching your pathway To failure. So, but given that there are people who are unfortunate, you'd think that the appropriate tack would be to determine who in history served the most effectively. And I just can't see anyone you could possibly point to more effectively who did that more effectively than Wilburforce ever. And so, you

would think that instead of erecting monuments to Lenon, the leftists would erect monuments to Wilburforce. But not only do they not do That, no one knows who the hell he was. It's one it is one of the greatest memory hauling of a hero in western history. I completely agree. Why is it my hypothesis is he's Christian is that you cannot highlight a man of faith who did something with such valor and such significance. It is it is at odds with almost every other fundamental narrative that they must try to present. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

that I think that's right that it is fundamentally But that begs another question and that would be why given that Wilbur Force was clearly a force for the good that Obama for example would have been pushing right by by which I mean movement towards a uh polity where there were no racial there was no racial or ethnic prejudice uh If if Wilbur Force is the poster boy for that sort of effort, which if you understand his life and you read about It, I can't see how you can conclude that. Then why would the lefties forego

that merely to oppose the fact that his motivation was fundamentally Christian? Because that points to something deeper, right? It points to the fact that the true war, so to speak, isn't political. It's not left versus right. It's something deeper. And then if it is anti-Christian, then why? Like what does that mean? Like there's an enlightenment element there, right? The enlightenment Types, especially after the French Revolution generated this narrative that science and religion were radically opposed and that if you were on the side of religion, you were against clear, rational, logical thinking. And and so you

could imagine a stream of anti-Christian sentiment emerging on the rationalist side, right? But but it isn't obvious to me at all that the leftist types who don't talk about Wilbur Force are anti-Christian because They're scientific rationalists. Like no, all you have to do is talk to them for like 15 seconds and you find out that that's not the case. They might use those arguments from time to time, but they certainly don't apply the rigors of scientific thinking to their own to their own radical hypothesis. So, it's deeper than that. And so, what is it exactly

that what is it exactly that they're objecting to? Is it the fact that the more radical Leftist story, Marxist, let's say, is in its essence anti-Christian, which I think is a fair statement. and that. But why would that be more important? This is the strange thing. Why would be that be more important than serving the poor and fighting for the abolition of slavery and all of its associated prejudices? Because it still doesn't get you out of the conundrum, which is why then why not Wilburforce? Instead of tearing down statues, why not erect Statues to him?

Yeah. So, well, what do you I know that's a that's a hard thing to sort out, but you got any obviously you were feeling something like this in high school, right? Correct. You guys are throwing out the baby with the bathwater here. Correct. Yeah. Which baby exactly? So my initial thought is that the leftist types, the ones that really understand it, they they they do not seek to achieve what a Wilburforce type figure would want, which is actual Liberation and actual eradication of evil. Yeah. I hate to say it. I think they just want to

be in charge. Yeah. No, no. I think Okay, so let let's pivot on that for a minute. Okay. So because this is a problem that's going to face the right or and is already and and we can talk about that. So there are a group of people 4% of the population and then there's still a fringe around that that would maybe be another 5% where you'd have to take it seriously. And so They're in the psychiatric diagnostic literature they fall under the cluster B heading. Okay. They're histrionic, which means they're dramatic and and I suppose

if they're healthy and histrionic, then they become actors, right? And entertainers. So there's a there's a positive spin on that. But if they're negative histrionic, they dramatize their pathology and use it as a weapon. Okay? They're narcissistic, which means they Want unearned social uh status. They're psychopathic, which means they're predatory parasites. and they're antisocial and that's just your standard criminal types. So that all fits in cluster B. Then there's personality traits that go along with that. Machavelian, they use language not to convey information but to manipulate and to manipulate instrumentally for their own purposes. So

if I'm speaking with you in a macavelian manner, I have A goal in mind that has nothing to do with the words that I'm using. You may have talked to journalists like that many times. Many times. Yes. Many times. Okay. So, they're Machavelian. They're That's so Well said. They're narcissistic. Again, that's that's an overlap. They're psychopathic. Oh, yes. And on the personality side, that associates with sadism. And so, all of that culminates in a personality style that has the proclivity to take positive Delight in the unnecessary suffering of others. Okay. So, now those people, let's

say they're 4% of the population. Okay. So, this is what they do. is they they look for a story that's working. Could be Christianity, Judaism, Marxism, could be conservatism. Doesn't matter what the story is. They look to see where it has purchase. So where the people who play that game are have power. They infiltrate that. They advertise Themselves as the vanguard of that movement. And they do that for no other reason than to gain power. Right? And so this is politically agnostic. Now they'll guide themselves in political cloaks and they'll learn all the tropes. I

mean this sort of thing you can see this sort of thing emerging like mad on the right on Twitter for example. But it's certainly it's been characteristic of the left for for a long time in so far as the left Has power. But you know you you were the one who just said I I think they want power. Yes, that's part of that. You know, in the in the in the biblical tradition, there's a battle always between the ethos that brings abundance. So that would be the miraculous provision of fish and bread and water that

never exhausts itself. That's all consequence of a particular kind of ethos. The one that Wilburforce embedded, That's juxtaposed against usurppation. Luciferian usurppation of power. Right. That's the temptation that Christ has offered in the desert. Right. The third temptation is the temptation of power. The whole world. Yeah. That's right. That's right. That's right. And one of the things that's Moses is punished brutally by God for using power near the end of his and for thinking he has the power to actually make water come out of the rock, not that it's dependent on Him. Dependent on him,

not God. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and worse than that, not only on him, but on it, God tells him to invite with his words and he uses force and authority, right? So, he doesn't enter the promised land. So, that's a good indication of the danger of power even when wielded by someone who is estimable, right? Because you have to give Moses's a lot of credit, right? Well, exactly. For dealing with that that Yeah. And then, of course, that's The temptation that's offered Christ. So, I do think it's a power game. Yes. And that and then there's

a commandment not to use God's name in vain. And then there's the comments in the gospels about the Pharisees, right? The Pharisees, the Pharisees are exactly the people who use religious terminology, so moral terminology to cloak their power-seeking machinations, right? And Christ goes after them. I think the best account of That is in Matthew where he tells them that they're like it's pretty brutal that they're like broods of vipers. Yeah. Worse. They're like graves full of rotting bodies that someone whitewashed. Right. And he says that if they would have they were the people had they

been in alive in the time of the prophets they purport to follow, they would have been part of the mob that would have killed them. Right? That's actually part of, you may know this, but that's part Of what sets them up for the crucifixion because they're not very happy with those insults publicly delivered. But that shows you also how old the problem is. So you can imagine one of the worst possible sins is to take the highest possible virtue. So that would be well, we stand for the oppressed, we stand for the poor, and then

to gerrymander that so that your standing for that only pushes you towards power. That's right. Right. And so and then it it also There's a clue in the gospels I think it's in the gospels as well about how you figure that out and the answer is by their fruits you will know them right so you look at well what I've done is I looked at the consequences for example of the green energy programs in Germany and the UK well what's the consequence let's take Germany Germany pollutes far more per unit of energy than they did

10 years ago and their energy prices are five Times as high. They're completely dependent on dictators of the worst sort. Yes, they continue to make the same mistakes. They're de-industrializing very very cataclysmically. It's destabilizing their political environment. And that falls disproportionately on the poor. I I don't see a way around that analysis. And nature nature worshiping is not anything new all throughout the no. That's right. Elijah, I mean is that Whole story is a manifestation of the nature worshippers versus the belief in God. But back to to just to reiterate a very profound point you

made in evangelical circles we get wrong which is people think do not take the Lord's name in vain just to say do not say God in an exploitive way. It actually the word is don't carry the names Lord the name of the Lord in vain meaning don't do actions in the name of God. You're exactly right. And so people wear the Costume of the holy or they appropriate Well, that's exactly what Christ tells the Pharisees literally. He says they wear the garbs of the priestly to elevate their moral status. And this is what we believe

is partially blasphemy the Holy Spirit, which is to to take the all of the trappings of religion. Oh, that's interesting. And and to do evil in that name. We believe that is one of the if not the wor most evil. So that you think that's the transgression Against Okay. So that's interesting because so my psychological understanding of the idea of the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit is what possesses your words when you truly aim up. And this makes sense to me psychologically because the thoughts that make themselves manifest to you spontaneously are directly

related to the intent of your aim. That's how your literally how your verbal mind works. Your imagination As well. You know, if you go on a date and you aim at sexual contact on the first date, the fantasies that come along with that aim will be of that nature obviously. And if you are on the hunt so to speak for a marital partner, the fantasies that accompany that will be quite different. So this is literally how your imagination. It's also the case that you know it's same idea with the date. If it's short-term mating is

your goal, Which by the way is the goal of the dark tetrad types differentially. So what that means is that the sexual revolution handed women over to the worst men. That's right. So that's fun to know. But it's definitely the case that your aim determines what comes to mind. Now you said that that sin against the Holy Ghost which is the unforgivable sin is the sin that occurs when you use the Lord's name in vain. So when you claim to be motivated by what's divine But are actually serving the Luciferian spirit of usurppation and power.

It it can be. I mean it's it's an open theological discussion. No fair. But I I and I take Dennis Prager's view of an Old Testament on this view, which is think about how much this a great example. Think about how much damage those evil priests did. Oh yeah, that's a great example. Look, most of the people that I've spoken with who proclaim themselves to be atheists are Atheists for two reasons. And I I mean the good faith atheists, let's say. Um first of all, they tend to be tilted in the engineering cognition direction. So

they're much more oriented towards things than people and that's a stable temperamental trait. But they've almost all also invariably been hurt by someone or some institution that's claimed to be religious. And then you could also see that that's right obviously betraying someone in in Dante's account of the Inferno when he goes down to the bottom of hell he finds the betrayers right next to Satan. Judas, Cassus, and um Brutus, right? Okay. So, the idea and the the lake of ice, which is right, that's where Satan is encased, right? Cuz he's too brutal, brittle to move.

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So, all right. So, I thought that sin Against the Holy Ghost was something like rejection of the Abrahamic call. You know, God comes to Abraham as the spirit of adventure. He says, "Go out into the world, leave your zone of comfort, move away from your people, and have the terrible adventure of your life." Well, if you reject that, you can't develop. Yes. Right. Because you're rejecting the spirit of learning. Think of how many young men are rejecting it every day. Well, what's and What's terrible about that, this is something we could talk about, too. I'm

I'm curious about your experience. It's it's been my experience that it doesn't take that much encouragement for those the people you're describing to be inspired to try. Now, I've talked to thousands of young men now who've had that experience. You know, like I see a lot of them at my lectures. They come to the meet and greets for example and they Tell me it's great. It's really great. They tell me that you know 5 years ago, 6 years ago cuz it's starting to be a long time now, 8 years ago even, they were not in

good shape and they came across my lectures or books and decided to decided that there was something worth aiming for and then decided to try. So to tell the truth, that's very common um vow, let's say to to take on more responsibility and they usually laugh About starting to make their bed or something like that, which is a lot less trivial than people think and then it's straightened them out. The terrible thing is how little encouragement that that actually took. So would when are people coming out to see you on campuses and what kind of

response do you get from the people that you talk to? The responses have been incredible. First, the the crowds alone, we're drawing crowds of three, four, 5,000 people in The middle of the day just for me to debate a random college kid or a college professor. It's remarkable. So, walk me through one of those events, Charlie. And so, I've been doing that for a decade just so I I started, as we know, we started Turning Point USA. One of the things I really wanted to make sure is that I was in touch with the target

audience that I was trying to convince and trying to persuade. No better way to do that than just go to the college Campus itself, set up a card table with, you know, maybe a poster that says something like, you know, I think government should be smaller, something like that, and start a discussion. I would do this at University of Wisconsin Madison. I would do this at University of Illinois when we had almost no funding, no connections, no idea what I was doing. I Right. Right. I've always believed in the grassroots interaction. So where are your

meet and greets? No, No data, no chart, no abstraction can get to that personal humanto human contact. So, I've been doing that for many years. And then Steven Crowder, to his credit, kind of popularized this idea of debating and putting it on. I said, "Oh, well, why don't I also film these interactions?" And so, I started to do that around 2018. So, it's been about seven or eight years now. And you know, then 10 kids would show up and then 20 kids. And we started to put These on the internet and kind of concurrent and

simultaneous to your rise where you you diagnosed what was going on in the West quicker and more accurately than anybody else, especially with young men. We started to see our popularity increase as we started to address some of the underlying problems that young people were facing, but in particular, young men were facing. And then CO happened. and we were basically out of business for, you know, a year in The sense where we weren't able to do campus activities. Donald Trump was no longer in office and we had to really kind of rebuild on campus basically

about 2 years ago. So, let's just say the spring of 2023, things really started to change where we we would do these campus events prior and we would bring in your traditional conservatives, 3 to 400 people, maybe a couple hundred interested types, maybe 50 liberals, 500 students, call it a Day. That's a success. All of a sudden, in 2023, we were drawing a different type of person and student. First of all, we were drawing people outside of the campuses that were welders, electricians, and plumbers, and the working men that heard that we were in town,

and they just how they hear social media. Okay? And so decentralized promotion. And so they would show up and I saw that. I mean, these were guys that would go up to the question line and They were not asking about Rouso or they were not asking about Jacqu Dereda. They were saying, "How do I be a better person because I'm expecting a daughter in six months?" Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. And all of a sudden here I am, you know, not in the position where you are nearly as seasoned to give advice to that young man,

but he's searching and he's looking for anyone that seems to have an idea of how the world is supposed to work that is professing a worldview of order and Structure and discipline, something that he could do. Yes. And then he want he was looking to me for ad. And that was a different dynamic. Whereas prior all the questions the last, you know, eight years before that were, hey Charlie, what do you think about the tax rate? What do you think about abortion? And I still get a lot of that, but it was something different. It

was young men especially that were seeking purpose and seeking a destination. So this is Crucially important this transformation because one of the things that so let's go back to that 60s dynamic that anti- athoritarian 60s dynamic you know the the role of the left in the 60s was like an entrepreneurial progressive radicalism let's say and the the stance of the conservative was Well, you know, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, guys. And that's a pretty good dynamic because you need a force for change and you need a force That resists that. But

I think, you see, I think what the conservatives did wrong, like profoundly wrong, was that they were their breaks, this is why they're always dismissed as reactionary. Their breaks B r a kes, their breaks were fundamentally, they're also moralistic. It was finger wagging. And and this is something that was distasteful, let's say, especially about the hypocritical Evangelical conservative types. I agree with that. Okay. So, so, but it was also strategically inappropriate because it's very hard to say to young people who might tilt in the progressive direction, uh, cuz they're a little more revolutionary in spirit,

let's say, are also a little more immature that the the reason that to abstain sexually, for example, is because you shouldn't do it. Now, that's true, but it's a weak argument. You know, I was talking to my Wife this morning about this. Um, we'd been apart for a few days and I saw her again yesterday and I was very happy about that. And she's she has a podcast. She's trying to reach out to young women cuz they're just as in much in or more trouble. They're just harder to talk to by a lot. Um, our

discussion centered around the fact that it isn't that you should get married, although you should. It's that you there is no alternative that's Anywhere near as good but by any standard whatsoever regardless of position of analysis or time length. Anything you do other than that even though marriage is very difficult and every other alternative is far far worse. And so if you want a pathway forward to what the conservatives support, the conservatives should be offering an invitation. They shouldn't be moralizing. And so and so and you're you're saying that they Shouldn't even be political at

the moment. And and I know you're you're a figure whose political activity is grounded in a religious substrate like Shapiro is of course like that too and Dennis Prager. Christianity is my foundation. Right. Right. Right. And so now you're seeing that these young men who are coming, especially the workingclass types, they're not so interested in the political. They're probably not even interested in the Arguments. Exactly. They're looking for something else. That's right. They're looking for direction. They're looking for connection. They're also looking for validation that the way they're thinking, the way they're feeling is directionally

correct. That it's the And so Yeah. So that having a direction is correct. Exactly. That not being not meandering through life. Yeah. Not having, you know, the aimless despair of walking in circles. Yeah. Not castrating Yourself so your toxic masculinity vanishes sometimes. Literally, far too often now. Literally. Literally. They're chopping off. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And so what we saw in 2023 again, so I have to wear multiple hats. Part of my hat is a political strategist. Part of my hat is just trying to be a role model for young people. Part of my head is

explaining these ideas to young people. I kind of connected all the dots. I said, "2024 is going to be a rebellion Of the men of the West unlike anything that we've ever seen." And I would say this to the experts and they would dismiss it. They said, "No, no, no. Row versus because Row versus Wade got repealed, remember that that either that summer or summer 2022. I can't remember. It might have been I think it might irrelevant. The point being is that Row versus Wade was supposed to be the most important political issue of 2024

and that women were going to rise up in Major numbers. I said, first of all, that might be true on one side of the the sex spectrum. On the other side or binary, the other side there is something happening with men that no one is talking about, no one wants to acknowledge, no one wants to admit. And so separately, the Trump team, to their credit, believed in it and actually ran an explicitly masculine campaign going on podcasts like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn. And so they were they were very Much embracing of this to their

credit. But separately, we must diagnose why is this happening? And the the education system, as you've astutely pointed out many times, is hyper feminine. There's no place for young men, especially young white men, of a Christian. One in four boys is now given an ADHD diagnosis. It's something and even the New York Times has said this is for parents not for kids. Meaning this there is there's no medicinal reason for this To happen according to the New York Times. Yeah. Right. So you know things have gone particularly sideways when I encourage people to read this

cover story. It was unbelievable where they were basically saying after this major study that like 1% of the kids actually do need ADHD medication that are completely out of control. But almost like 90 to 95% are just because the parents don't want to have an unruly kid around. Yeah. Or or well and and if That's the New York Times diagnosis, then you can also be absolutely 100% certain that they underplay the role of the educational establishment in setting up the circumstances so that parents are likely to draw that conclusion. I mean with all this trans

butchery nightmare you know my profession particularly the social work end of it but my like real psychologists let's say were also stunningly craven in their unwillingness to resist this the mantra was to parents Well would you rather have a live trans child or a dead child which there was never Charlie there was never a shred of evidence for that it's one of the most evil things that has happened it it it it is unbelievable the people who promoted that should be imprisoned. It's it's absolutely widespread and it's still in the fibers of the pediatric community.

Yeah. Yeah. That's for sure. It really is for sure. Well, the Supreme Court of the UK may have broken the back Of that movement a week ago. That was unbelievable. I That was one of the most Now and then the Brits, God love them, do something quite radical in the right direction, you know. Well, Brexit was a good example of that. That's interesting. They put through that free speech legislation that the Labor Party tried to resin that has actually reshaped the universities to some substantial degree. That was in part a consequence of me being disinvited

from Cambridge, which had a long-term consequence that the disinvitectors hadn't really reckoned on because a whole group of professors at Cambridge got together and decided that they were going to change the policies at Cambridge, which they did in a historic vote and then they changed the policies at the national level and the repercussions of that haven't haven't stopped yet. But so yes, so this terrible Demoralization, right? So all right, now you're being c you're advertising on social media. Let's let's go back and tell this whole story. So because I'm very curious about it. So you

you had an an an intuition that you could go to campuses. Okay. So tell me how where did that idea come from, do you think? Well, I never went to college. Uh first of all, which is right. You've been to many colleges. I've been to more colleges than most people. You might have me Beat, but I've been to well over 200 campuses across the No, no, you've got me beat. Yeah. I mean, almost every almost every college. Yeah, you can imagine. I can uh I can I've either given a lecture, a speech, or started a

chapter there. Yeah. So, my daughter doesn't have a university degree, so she started a university. So, that's very comical, but this is good. Okay. So, so that means you do have a university education. You just got it a very Different way. Okay. So, so you decided that's interesting too because it's like I asked you what your in your your motivation for doing this was and the first thing you said was that you didn't have a degree. So, that's very interesting. So, so what were you also curious about going to campuses like? Yes. And that that's

really a great point. So, just as a little background, I wanted to go to West Point. I didn't get in. I told my parents I would take a Gap year to kind of figure this out because I saw some momentum of a local political group that was out of the cookie group by the way that kind of kept growing. I said I want to keep this going and play this out. See where this can be. This was after high school. Just after high school. That's correct. That was the summer I graduated high school. Okay. A

really amazing mentor uh by the name of Bill Montgomery, may he rest in peace, was the only guy ever, he said, "Charlie, you shouldn't go to college." I was like, "That's the most radical thing someone could say." So that idea was planted in my head and I said, "Okay, I'll just take a gap year. I'll kind of figure things out." Why did he tell you that? He thought he, in his own words, he sensed an entrepreneurial gift and skill that I had, right? And a drive. He was a kind of an entrepreneur himself, part of

business. So he could see the Entrepreneurial part of me. He didn't think that would work well in college. Yeah. And he said, "You have to go create, not just Oh, good. Oh, that was what he said. I see. You have to go build." He said, "You have something in you. You have a drive. you have a passion, you have a relentless kind of um spirit. And he says, "You shouldn't go to college." That was the most radical thing that a suburban kid in Chicago could hear cuz everyone would go To college. Of course, it's a

mark of failure not to go to college. Yeah. And so not getting into West Point was very demoralizing. However, it was the greatest gift ever from the Lord because I took the gap year and to your credit, which is no one's ever put this together. All my friends were in college. So I would start visiting my friends in colleges. So you think about it because I would go to high school. I I graduate high school. I still have Friends with all my high school friends. So I'd go to University of Iowa, University of Illinois to

go visit them, Northwestern. And I realized as I was trying to get this political thing off the ground. This is where it all stemmed from. And I was trying to put pieces together that the academy was where the fight needed. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. To go towards. And simultaneously as I was trying to find funding and trying to get donors behind our effort, something that Almost every wealthy person that I would encounter is they had a soft spot and a interest in trying to invest in college campuses, especially conservativeleaning philanthropists and business types in America. I

think about 2012 that's turned around to bite them pretty damn hard. Oh yeah. But they it would get their attention, right? So here I would be at a cocktail party and I'd be 18, 19 years old trying to get funding, trying to get someone's attention. They say, "Okay, what do you do?" I said, "Well, I'm trying to bring conservatism to college campuses." Oh, really? And they they would be sincere. They would lean in. Right. Right. They say, "What about my alma mater? Have you spoke there?" And so I'd have a little connection. I'd say, "Well,

maybe I could visit there if we have a little bit of money." And so it helped. So I had interest from the donor community. And so you could see that there was an opening there, the Door that was open. And I had no idea how big that opening was. And the more that I learned some of these donors, as you you would say, they'd give hundreds of millions of dollars to these schools. Yeah. Right. And so they had a lot of vested interest. They were very um they were very curious about a young guy that

wants to go shake up these campuses because remember that's when woke was really starting to come up. Yeah. 13, 14, 15, we saw it bubble up. 15 was I Think the Pearl Harbor moment. It was Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri. Hands up, don't shoot. That's where woke started to present itself in Oh, you'll have to tell me why you think that event was at least at least from the because I I think at the top of all woke elements, race was the primary, let's just say the primary fencing. Yeah, it's the it's the division point. Correct.

And so in 2015 when Ferguson, Missouri, the lie, the Scam of hands up don't shoot with Michael Brown, Black Lives Matter was born out of Ferguson, Missouri, actually on a college campus at University of Missouri in Colombia, Missouri. And that spread like wildfire through, of course, a lot of Democrat operatives and money being spent. Remember how long we spent on that news cycle of America's racist because of Michael Brown and all the CNN commentators famously said, "Hands up and don't shoot." And we we we spent More time on race obsession in the last two years

of Obama's presidency than the last four or five years prior. And that's because Well, that that's that's a hallmark of the danger of of allowing race to be an issue in the presidency to begin with. Exactly. But an an underappreciated element here is Eric Holder was setting the table for that with very loyal people in the Department of Justice that believe that police were inherently racist. Right? They were Launching investigations into very successful police police departments trying to find police brutality and racial bias. And so the table was set and that was the mini George

Floyd moment of the beginning. Well, you know, psychologists played a role in that in a major way too because you had uh Baggi and her crowd Oh yeah. with the u what do they call that? the the implicit association test completely forcing the idea of implicit bias, you know, and Social psychology is a very corrupt discipline and it has been maybe from its onset and it's very it's stacked from top to bottom with careerists and it was social psychologists for example who denied that there was anything any such thing as left-wing authoritarianism. until 2017, right?

You just that was something you didn't get to think if you were a social psychologist or even investigate. We cracked that. There was a couple of people working on it around 2016. The last bit of research I did was on left-wing authoritarianism and then everything my lab blew up. You know, it just became impossible for me to continue. But so that that dovetailed with this insistence that people were looking at the world through a lens that was irmediably biased in terms of their privilege and their racial and ethnic Identity and you know and it's tricky

because there people do have a tilt in the ethnosentric direction right because well how about because you favor your family right you tend to favor the local you also tend to favor the non-nvel and the familiar. Well, exactly. And now there are exceptions to that. Well, you see this in the Old Testament accounts because sometimes the foreigner is the best thing that ever happened. So that would be like Jethro in the story of Moses, Moses' father-in-law and Midian. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And so, and then you have the alternative that would be like Jezebel who's the

foreign devil, so to speak. And so, you know, that's a that's a paradox that's very difficult to to properly navigate. Okay. So yeah, it's 2015 2016 things went like seriously sideways and that's where just to complete the point my job on campuses became far more interesting because our Our organization shifted from primarily you know economic discussions of Marxism and capitalism to core cultural hotbed topics in 15 161 17 race and then of course the next layer gender transgenderism. So the beast that Betty Fredan and Judith Butler raised that monster reared its head with incredible ferocity

in 16 and 17 in the academy and people don't believe it when I say this I I saw this happen though it's okay just really quick in 2012 2013 there was Almost no transgender anything on these campuses it didn't exist I could tell you I went to these campuses I talked to these students you might have a you know an a feminant looking guy maybe wearing a dress as a joke it was not anywhere The social contagion within 5 years was dramatic. It was a different place. You went from just, you know, okay, you are

who you are to you're not going to use my pronouns. Hyper tyrannical, hyper authoritarian. So then here we are a 5-year-old organization with a, you know, a growing infrastructure and a growing presence and a growing staffing um, you know, organization. And we we multiplied significantly because then the donor types like hold on what happened on my alma mater why is it that they're burning down UC Berkeley? Remember Milo Yiannopoulos went to University of California Berkeley in the spring of 17 and they burnt the whole place down. Ben Shapiro very similarly. And so we then be

found ourselves accidentally or through serendipity on the front lines of the American culture war. Yeah. Well, there's there's a lot of that that's not accidental. you know, you you think about the way that you told your story. I mean, it's improbable, but you were of the temperamental type. That's that strange blend of entrepreneurial temperament and conservative temperament. Those things Don't generally go together, right? The conservative temperament, you could accept the libertarians because they're probably the entrepreneurial conserv and and growing up, I actually was more libertarian. It's very interesting. Okay. Okay. Cuz well that's where the

entrepreneurial conservatives hang out is with the libertarians. That's right. Right. And and they have an uneasy alliance with a great point. Mhm. Okay. Okay. And so that that temperamental factor was already operating at you in high school and then you didn't get into West Point, you said, but you were interested in universities and you obviously had the intelligence to manage them. And so, you know, it's it's it's very useful to develop an idiosyncratic pathway forward if you have the IQ horsepower to manage it because it makes you unique if you could do that. So, okay.

And so, you had a mentor who told You that it's probably best for you not to go to college because you have an entrepreneurial bent. Now, you're trying to build a political organization, but you're not exactly sure how. you're visiting the campuses and you have friends there and you see that there's an opportunity to talk on campuses where you can also get an education in doing that but also that there's donor interest and that's very interesting too because if you're a good entrepreneur One of the things you do is you go talk to your marketplace

always that's the grassroots things but also with regards to fundraisers and you see you offer like 10 ideas all of which you're interested in and you see where the door opens That's knocking. Exactly. So you saw that there were these people who wanted to support the education of young people, but who could see that their money was being counter counterproductively spent to say The least. Yeah. Well, leave large piles of money laying around unguarded and see who comes in first to take it. Right. Right. That's that parasitical type that they'll swarm in there like mad.

That's happened in gravitate to the universities. Yeah. It's the same phenomena that we talked about earlier that cluster B narcissistic dark tetrad 4% of the population they're looking around to see where uh what would you say inhabitable carcasses are lying Around unintent and they're disproportionately represented at the academy that 4% might be 40% of the administrators or the professor types because think about it well increasingly that became the case because they might be saying something to that target audience the student but they actually want to see that student become a leftist everything there's a lot

of Mchavelian influences in how these professors present their ideas yeah well It's also the case that it was the Machavelian administ so what happened at the university I I watched this is you lived the the administration encroached and that's not surprising because there was money at a foot so why wouldn't there be competition for the funding so the administrator ers who are generally failed faculty by the way, failed and embittered faculty. So the faculty are already embittered because they're not rich like investment Bankers. And then you take embittered faculty members who couldn't make it as

faculty. So now they encroach on the faculty who are too busy doing their job and too apolitical and also too willfully blind to notice. The administration encroaches decision by decision until they radically outnumber the professors and that's pretty much fate to comple. And then the woke mob took over the administration and that took no time At all. Right. And so now that's where we're at in the universities and I can't see how that would be reversed. Okay. So now you tell me how you started going to campuses and what you did to begin with and

how you got away with it. So the first person who wrote us a check was a guy by the name of Foster Freeze. May he also rest in peace. Uh amazing philanthropist. I met him very early on. Uh I decided to go to the Republican National Convention in 2012 in pursuit Of finding donors. This was August after I graduated high school and I just had this idea to try to bring I the conservative agenda to young people to the next generation. I met him in a stairwell at the Republican National Convention. I gave him a

stairwell pitch and to your point, which is exactly right, I kind of presented four or five things really quickly. Yeah. No one trained it. No one I just kind of instinctively I said, "Well, here's five Ideas that I have." He laughed. He chuckled. Gave me his business card. He said, "Be in touch. Sent me 10,000 bucks the next week." That was like, "How did you know that there was such a thing as finding donors?" And what do you think it was that set you up to have the goal to assume you could do first of

all to know that that was a thing and then to have the goal to pursue it? The second one I don't know. I don't know where I got the goal to pursue it. Uh I will say Bill Montgomery being a mentor of mine was very uh encouraging to me. Okay. Okay. You had someone encouraging you. Yes. Um but but and you said he saw something in you. Yes. And he was he was and he was an entrepreneur. Yes. And he never asked for anything from me which was very unique. It wasn't like he was trying

to have some agenda. He was 72 years. So you had a mentor which you desperately need as a young person. Definitely someone who believes that you Can do it. And and you think about it, you're 18 years old, you know, you don't know how to check cash checks. You don't know you barely know how to put on a tie. Literally, I didn't know how to tie a tie for the first two years. Uh you know, at Turning Point. Again, my parents were are phenomenal and they deserve a lot of credit. Um, but this was kind

of a a beyond the upbringing where an external mentor comes in and kind of points you and says, "Hey, I Think you're really good at this, found a skill, identified a skill, and kind of molded me in that direction." You know that young male elephants go mad if there's no old male elephant to butt heads with them. That's very well. That's very apppropo for Republicans. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. So, yeah. But, but it was it was I'm a quick learner. I'm a quick study. And so I started to do research. I said,

"Well, are there Things such as external nonprofit political organizations?" Oh, there's a 501c3 or there's a 501c4 and you can raise money. And so the first couple months was me actually learning what am I building? Am I building? So you were training as an administrator and a manager then too. I I was everything for the first of course. I was CEO, I was janitor, I was I was everything. And so I had to make a decision. Of course, I asked for advice. Am I going to start a For-profit company? Am I doing a non and

I we decided on nonprofit largely because we believe that there was an untapped pool of philanthropic dollars that wanted to see these campuses challenged and disrupted. And how do you figure that out? Having a lot of conversations with a lot of wealthy people and I realized that there so if you talk to a donor type they will they'll have two different ways of deploying capital in their after Years. The first of which is investment which comes with strict return on investment requirements and they look at that as hey I need to make sure that this

money is stewarded and shepherd and eventually I get an ROI. Right. Right. The second bucket is philanthropy where they actually aren't looking for a material or a monetary ROI. They're looking for a cultural or a macro ROI. And those sometimes are in donor advised funds or they're in 501c3 type Categories. And we saw a lot of amazing patriotic donors that stepped up and said, "Hey, I have done very well in my business." And this is what I found. And I connected the dots. They said, "I have this money sitting around that I pledged to Yale,

right? A million bucks a year, and I'd hate not to give it to them. Is there some other better idea?" What we found was so many conservative donors that had a lot of money, but not a lot of great ideas of where to deploy that 501. Think about it. The predominant amount of 501c3s in the in the in the educational space are leftwing. Yeah. All of them. Right. Exactly. So, here I am. I'm kind of this new disruptive force and they say, "Okay, I'm not going to give him the money I give to Yale, but

I'll give him 50 grand a year. Kind of see how he does." Right. Right. Right. And so, we started to earn the trust of a lot of donors and earn the trust of a lot of philanthropists. Okay. Okay. So, now you now you're going out on campuses. Do you remember the first time you did this? Oh, yeah. University of Wisconsin Madison. Okay. Tell me about that. I drove up there. We had a singular stand. Who's we? Uh, well, we being like, actually, Bill Montgomery came with me to that one. Um, but he kind of just

was in the shadows. I literally had a card table that I brought from my parents house and set it up right there on the campus, University Of Wisconsin Madison. I think I still have a picture of this. And I had some sign that said big government sucks. You know, a little provocative. Yeah. And I sat there at a chair and I think a student would come up maybe once every 15 minutes. And I was there trying to solicit to try to get a chapter started there at University of Wisconsin Madison. And that that was a

turning point chapter. Correct. So So this was partly a recruitment drive. It was a Recruitment drive and to see if there was any interest and also to try to and I to be perfectly honest, I love the debate. I love the exploration of ideas. I think dialogue is a gift given to us by God. I really in the pursuit of truth and you know being able to debate some of these college kids was really life-giving. It was exhilarating to me as a 19-year-old. Well, that is a university education. That's education. Right. Sure. Sure. Well, and

there is Historical precedent for what you're doing. I mean, I remember for example outside the Steuart or the uh the building I worked with at worked in in at the University of Toronto, there was quite frequently a card table set up and it was the bloody communists that were at the back of that. So, I was That's what was so funny. Very rarely is it our side that does this and there's an element here that I think you've you've touched you've gone you gone around the Edges on that I want to dive into I was

viewed as unseammly by the conservative establishment because the conservative way of doing things it's not to go set up a card table it was to speak properly and to go to Stanford and to get the highest possible education and what I was unknowingly on the cutting edge of was something you mentioned earlier is that conservatives have now become low trust of institutions and liberals have become high trust of institutions Whereas liberals are the ones that will defend the FDA and they'll defend the CDC and they'll defend Fizer and they'll defend the intelligence that's a defending

fizer that's really but they will because they're they're high trust of institutions because there's no one more trustworthy from a leftist perspective than big pharma and but they find themselves defending institutions in the 1960s they were low low low trust of institutions don't send us to war you Know there Yeah. Whereas today actually and I was on the cutting edge of this was in 2012 2013 14 conservatives were still on the high trust of institutions. Okay. So let me rephrase that slightly because well because you understand what I'm trying I do. I do. Well there's

a real conundrum there because a conservative with low trust in institutions is like an Right. Well but but that but we're trying to conserve something institutions have Destroyed. Well okay that's the thing. So imagine that there's a hierarchy of institution. There's the fringe of the institution that's pretty exploratory. You can move into the center that's more conservative. Then you can move right to the bottom which is well what? Well, I would say it's it's religious fundamentally like as you move towards the core. That's right. You move towards what's more religious. And so the conservative stance

isn't anti Anti-institution. It's a stance that notes that I know what's happened. You know in the story of Moses when Moses goes off to get the commandments. So he's the pipeline to God, right? He leaves his brother in charge, Aaron. They they do they have a rave party. That's exactly right. They they make this golden calf which is a materialistic object and they dance naked in the streets and have an orgy. And that's what happens to the political When it's detached from the sacred when it loses that. Okay. So, so it isn't that the conservatives

have become skeptical of institutions. It's that the conservatives have noted that the institutions no longer serve the purpose for which they were established. Right. Chartered. Exactly. And they're objecting. And that's happening everywhere. It's h and that's part of this radical secularization. Yes. That's it's not just secularization because That's there should be a separation between church and state. Let's say it's it's not that the institutions have become secular. that they've turned 180° from their original orientation and are now rampaging as madly as possible in the other direction. So the universities are no longer the fortress walls

against the barbarians. They're actually the voice of the barbarians. Right. Hence the pro- Hamas uh demonstrations on campus or the Black Lives Matter stuff or the transgender stuff. Very well said. Exactly. Okay. So, but we got to we got to get that terminology exactly right because it's very dangerous for conservatives to conceptualize themselves as anti-institutional because then they become indistinguishable from the radicals that they're so it isn't that it's a return to the sorts of things we talked about the beginning like Wilburforce and those foundational Principles and you're going to campuses saying you people have

lost the plot. Exactly. Right. which they definitely have like there's there's the universities I cannot see you know I I've been working in various ways to figure out how to revitalize the universities and the bricks and mortar universities like how do you revitalize the institutions dominated by people who are laming in the wrong direction They're irredeemable so what does that mean okay so let's continue practically here so tell me what happens the first time at Wisconsin conversation every 15 minutes. Couple kids were interested. Found a chapter leader. Uh oh, you found a chapter. Okay. So

that was success. So it was a success. You found a couple groups of people and we started the group and then I did it at Marquette University cuz I had a friend that went there. And so you Walked away from that. How did you feel when you walked? Exhilarated. You did because then I was able to go back to two or three people giving us money and say and they gave us 500 bucks. I said now we have a chapter we can and they said okay well let us know how how it goes proof of

concept right and so then I we did it at Marquette and we did at University of Illinois and we did it at India so you went from zero to one which is a huge leap huge lift hugely because Getting that second chapter was so much easier than of course x nihilo of course of course of course zero to one is the first customer is impossible the second one's hard it was one of the most fulfilling days in turning point USA history right okay was being able to get a singular champion Right. Of course. Of course.

Cuz that's the one that's most unlikely. Your first sale is by far the most unlikely. Exactly. Right. Okay. So then you went to Marquette. Then Marquette. Okay. And what happened there? Very similar situation, but it was also a friend of somebody in high school and they were a private school, so it was a little harder to do the typical outreach, but they applied for a permit in like the student center and same sort of thing. Found. So you were permitted from the beginning as well. Well, in WMadison, they don't care as much because it was

a public school. So they just you can kind of any individual Can walk on campus and kind of Right. Okay. But Marquette, I had a friend that I went to high school with. They said, "Yeah, I'll apply for something for you." Okay. Similar sort of thing. And they said, "I sat there for 5 hours, Jordan. I would sit there for five or six hours." Cuz that was time well spent because for me, I was trying to build the semblance of something, a real infrastructure, a real organization. And boy, was it difficult. Yeah. And but it

Was never disheartening, though, cuz I had nothing to lose. You have to understand I'm an 18 19 year old kid, right? It's not like I'm mortgaging the house. Not like I have two, you know, two kids. Yeah. So, so there's such low downside and unlimited. Sure. Well, that's the entrepreneurial niche. And it was such an adventure because it's a campus I've never been to talking to a bunch of kids. It's, you know, you're you're almost having verbal combat which Is very entertaining. Well, and I imagine too that it must have been heartening to you as

well to see that you could hold your own. Exactly. And I re So that's a really important point here. I am as a kid that didn't go to college thinking, do I really have the intellectual capacity to joust with kids that are learning all day long? Yeah. Right. I realize they're not learning all day long. Yeah. You see, I was reading Van Mises and Rothbard before I Came across you. Yeah. Hayek, you know, Milton Friedman, very libertarian economics was my baseline foundational philosophy. A lot of reasons for that. Very, very interesting. Tons of profound insights,

some of which don't, I think, actually play out very well in the material world. But so I would encounter kids on campuses who profess to be studying economics, for example, and they didn't know very much, right? And I realized, I said, well, there's a Disconnect. They're they're borrowing money to go learn about things that I actually have a greater mastery of because I was Well, you can learn a lot if you read the right books. Oh, and in my idle time, I became obsessed with being proficient and understanding economics. That was kind of my entry

point. Oh, yeah. I see. And so, you have to remember 2013, you know, that burning bush story. Oh, yeah. That's Moses' entry point, by the way. So, the burning Bush, I think. Yeah. burning bush moment happens when Moses goes off the beaten path. He's a shepherd, right? So, a good man keeps the wolves and lions at bay, serves the vulnerable. He's got that mastered and then something attracts his attention and he takes it seriously and that's what transforms him. So, you said you did that with economics. Yeah. Moses said, "Hani, here I am." Yeah. At

that moment of the call of God, right? Exactly. Exactly. So, so, so this is It's a repeated theme throughout the scriptures. Hani. Yes. Well, Hani. Hani, which is a here I am. So you remember in the in the Moses, right? So he's making himself available. But remember Abram, Abra Abraham said that with the binding of Isaac when God uh the same phrase, here I am. And the call of Samuel, here I am, for example. So that phrase, here I am, Hanei is repeated about seven times throughout the Old Testament. Oh. Oh. How do you spell

it? Uh Hanini. Uh I Don't know how to spell Hebrew, but it's here I am. It's in the English translation, right? So it's like take me, use me, I'm available. I am yours. Mold me. I I I I I I am your obedient vessel. Right. Right. That's like the mission impossible motif. Your assignment if you choose to accept it. Exactly. But it's a very powerful burn. It's a very powerful Hebrew word. It's basically here I am. My my arms are out. I am yours. Full surrender to your Purpose. Well, that's it. So, you know, there's

a pattern that's established in that in that burning bush story because the burning bush is something living. Yes. That's but it doesn't consume it which is what's so amazing. Well, that's that's life. Life metabolizes. Life burns but without being consumed. It's that's the secret of life, right? So that the burning bush is life most deeply apprehended. And Moses is being a shepherd. He's near Mount Si or Horeb, Which is where heaven meets earth. And something attracts his attention. And then the thing what happens to Moses is that he takes it seriously and he gets to

the bottom of it and that transforms him. So the idea is something like if you watch for adventure and opportunity, if you watch for the pathway forward, something will grip your attention and it'll compel you, you'll be obsessed by it. Well, you take that obsession seriously. You get to the bottom of Things that transforms you. Okay. So you were doing that with economics. And it's funny as I went to the bottom of it, it actually brought me back to my Christian upbringing and my roots, which is Well, that's what happens to Moses because when he

gets to the bottom of things, it's the voice of the spirit of his ancestors, right? Because eventually I was reading Hayek Road to surfom and I had kind of an aha moment. I said there's a lot of good and evil claims in This book. By what standard are they saying something good? Right. Exactly. What brought me back to my Christianity? Because in the you know the road to surfom it's all about the idea of how government tyranny will will swallow society will envelop it but it happens in steps. I said time out. There's truth claims

being made embedded in this. By what standard do we consider this? you figure that out. I might have watched one of your videos. I mean, I to be Honest, I don't know. I I I I do remember though think to myself, libertarian economics is not enough. I want to go deeper. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I made exactly the same conclusion when I was studying political science in university. The first year or two was okay because we were reading great ancient thinkers. But then in my third and fourth years when it started to become more specialized the

basic claim was that human beings are motivated Economically and then it became left and I thought no that's not right that's that's not right correct there the there's a foundational there's a substructure that that's why I started studying psychology and so that's where I started to take and it's been I take my faith very seriously I love your biblical series your Exodus series and your gospel series is terrific you deserve a lot of credit for that and it's been phenomenal my wife any wire Types deserve a lot of credit for that too because they took

a big risk. Yeah. But you you had the initiative to bring everybody together and you know it was you did a great job with it and you you presented it in a way that I'd never have because you have you have a very unique psychological understanding and interpretation of of the scriptures. Yeah. Well, we had great panelists, too. Like, they were a very good crowd. The people that that Decided, yeah, it was really good. What ended up happening is as I started to pursue the scriptures more and take it seriously, remember back to our timeline,

simultaneously, the woke stuff all of a sudden reared its head, which is a manifestation of the spiritual. Yeah. Yeah. So, almost I was in this place in 2018, 2019 when it was almost peak woke. We weren't there yet. 2020 was peak woke where I was starting to understand what was really going on Here. that this was a manifestation of a spiritual struggle. Yeah. That Yeah. It's foundational. Well, the postmodernists made that claim and so did the Marxists. It's like, no, we're going all the way to the bottom and uprooting everything. They want to go back

to what happened in the garden. Did God really say that? Is that really what God says? To question, debase, and to challenge every truism of the West. I mean, that's the sin of Eve. Exactly. You can take the right to establish the moral order to yourself. It's the one thing that's claimed. There's many axiomatic claims in Genesis in the openings of Genesis, right? That the word is the creative force that brings good out of chaos and possibility. That human beings are made in the image of God, that men and women exist as independent entities, and

that they Yeah. Yeah. And that you're not to take the right to establish the moral order To yourself. It's the one prohibition and I think biologically it's something like you fundamentally you have to adapt yourself to the realities of the world right you don't have the wherewithal this is where Nietz went spectacularly wrong because Nietz said after his pronouncement that God had died that human beings would have to create their own values he said with lament yeah he did remember but then he felt that Creating our own values was the pathway out and it's not

the pathway out is a return to the foundational values, right? And the more intense the crisis, the more toward the middle of the foundation you have to look. So it's not political because this isn't a political crisis. It's truly it's truly the what would you say? It's the ragged edge of the anti-Christian revolution. That's what it is. Yeah. But but what the hopeful part to kind of bring this All in is that we are seeing young men especially want to return to our roots. Yeah. They want to So that goes back to the conservative element.

What are we conserving? In some ways we're actually trying to rebirth. We're trying to have a re a new birth of freedom as Abraham Lincoln would say. Freedom and responsibility. Yes. Because you can't have one without the No. And and probably the right emphasis is res is responsibility. Remember when God tells Moses to stand up against the Pharaoh what he says he doesn't say tell them let my people go that's what the civil rights crusaders focused on that isn't what he said he said let my people go so they may worship me in the wilderness

so it's ordered freedom and ordered freedom is voluntary responsibility and you see what you're seeing and and then let's close with this because I want your insights into this what you're seeing when those workingclass men are coming To your talks and and they've become more and more popular as you said as you've advertised them is they're looking for well they're looking for it seems they're looking for responsible direction correct okay so now tell me how you've had to modify the manner in which you're conducting these debates let's say cuz for a while you would have

been testing yourself to see if you could hold your own and that's kind of an intellectual battle Shapiro did very Much the same thing correct right too bad Milo fell off the edge of the world, but he had a pretty rough go of it. Surprising he did and a lot of trauma. A lot. A lot. So, okay. So, first of all, it's combat and you're trying to develop yourself and then you're doing that quite successfully and educating yourself along the way, but then you see this shift. Yeah. So, what sort of shift has there been

in your Self-conceptualization and your and your understanding of your mission and the way that you conduct yourself? Like you see, you're being called upon to be a leader, let's say, that's not merely political. That's why my understanding of it. Correct. It's an enormous responsibility. Enormous. I mean, when when I show up to college campus after college campus, mind you, during the day, they have got a million other things they could be doing. This is 12:00 p.m. lunchtime and 4,000 people are waiting for me to go debate. And what are they on? They're on the campus

grounds where Yeah, sometimes amphitheaters. They're all They're in trees. They're everywhere. I mean, you could see these images. We could supply them to you if you want to. Yeah, we do that. You could superimpose them over this discussion. Let's do that. Um, and I'm not making this up. I'm not exaggerating. I mean, they're they're as Far as the eye can see. These crowds are there. And part of it, we must be honest, is they want to see a good verbal combat because they don't get it at the university. You see, they're not there's something that

that's partly likely part of the femini the pathological feminization without no competition. But you think about it, what I am doing is hyper masculine, which is no rules except, hey, we're just going to go basically figure this Out. This is the closest thing to a a verbal street fight that one can have. Anyone can show up to the mic, prove me wrong. I have no notes. I have no AI. I have nothing. Tell me why you're correct. For three hours I will sit there and everyone will watch. It's a gladatorial match for the best ideas

of the west. Right? And there's something there that is remarkably alluring. Uh but for me I also need to balance as Christ would say being as much truth Which of course I'm inclined towards as love. So a lot of these kids are struggling for sure. Well even that guy that you just talked to and maybe we'll throw this. Yeah. So he was radically anti-Semitic, but also he said he had served. He looked to me like someone who'd been very very hurt. He's fallen to to this sort of snake pit of conspiratorial theories and and the

brain rot that comes with it. Yeah. Yeah. But you could you could also see That he's he is he would be very happy and he did listen to you to the degree that he could cuz he had tilted pretty hard towards paranoia. That's very difficult to escape from once it's established. But he was trying to listen to you and I thought you did a very good job of not playing easy tricks on him like because he was an easy person just to throw into the eternal fire so to speak. Right. But there was part of

him that was trying to Find the way. Yes. Yeah. And that's 5 years ago I probably would have just thrown him to the wolf. Right. So now I look at myself as a father of two kids 31 years old. So I'm no longer a colleague of these college kids. I'm not quite a professor, but I have a little bit more wisdom, a little bit more life experience. So, I'm trying to be more tender when I see someone that is not overly aggressive. Now, if someone comes and they say, "You're the worst person Ever." They start

insulting me, I'll kind of meet him at their own frequency to try to just little make an example out of him because you However, that one guy could see that's a very deeply hurt individual. Very. Yeah. And so, is that a type of guy that I want to just make fun of? I tried to say, "Hey, can I have a a loving conversation with this person?" And it's tough, man. Oh, it's tough because those are unloving ideas that he was espousing. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Well, that's that issue of uh trying to love your enemy. Okay.

So, we could maybe we'll close with this a little investigation into what that means. So, you know, in the gospels when Christ is telling people how to conduct themselves and also how to pray, he basically says, "Well, first aim up. remember your goal and your goal is to serve what's highest in all ways, mind, body, and soul. Okay. Well, that that's a good piece of advice. It's like why Wouldn't you begin an endeavor with that vow? I'm if if this is worth doing, it's worth doing perfectly and throwing myself completely into it. Okay. So, in

the next part of that is to remember that everybody's made in God's image. Okay. So, that reminds you who you're talking to, no matter who it is. That's right. Someone potentially redeemable. and then to pay attention to the moment because then you can see your pathway forward. Okay? And so that along with This injunction to love your enemy. Okay? So what so what would that mean? Well, if you were sensible and you thought about things in the frame we just established, what you'd hope is that what you'd notice is that you probably don't want an

enemy. Enemies are costly. Yes. and and someone one person who decides to go out of their way to make your life miserable because you treated them badly. That might be it for you, right? So try not to make Enemies. Well said. And then the next issue is well would you rather have an enemy or a friend or an ally? And maybe if you conducted yourself impeccably, you could turn someone like that guy, for example, into an ally because you could see him. He's halfway sucked into the darkest possible abyss, but there was still part of

him that was genuinely searching, you know, and he was intimidated. Almost a cry for help. Oh, definitely. Well, and then he was Throwing out these ideas to you and willing to do it because he respected you to see how you would sort through them, you know, and you said to him that, well, you didn't go along with many of the virtually everything he said, but you did it without being dismissive. And okay, and so now you've also said that you've shifted into you didn't use these words, but that you've shifted into more of a mentor

role. And that Makes sense, right? Because when you were first 18 or 19, you weren't a mentor. First of all, you didn't know what the hell you were doing. You were learning and it was reasonable for you to test yourself against your peers. But now they're not your peers. So now the question is, who the hell are you, right? And one one answer would be a political operative. But the people that are coming to you, especially the working-class types that you described, They're not after a political operative. They couldn't care less about it. the best

word. I've I'm kind of a teacher in some ways. I hate to use that word, but they're looking for it. Why do you hate to use it? You've been you've been honing your skills for quite a long time. Well, because I take that with a lot of weight. I think that people should only self-describe themselves as a teacher if Okay. Well, you could say you would like to be a teacher. I would Like to be a teacher. I'm just saying I take that with great responsibility as you should because that's a big deal to call

yourself a teacher. You must really know what you're talking about. And I believe I do to a certain extent, but I'll tell you, you know, doing these campus things, you realize how little you actually know. You realize you have a lot more study because you think about it, you're up against thousands of college kids that have an obsession About a hyper discipline of a topic. Yes. Yes, definitely. And you and they'll mention things you've never heard of. Like, okay, I'll get back to you. So, it requires even more study afterwards. Yeah. How much time do

you spend studying? I try to do an hour and a half to two hours a day, but when I'm in season, which is I'm doing 27 campus stops plus my two-hour podcast radio show every single day, plus speeches, plus two kids, plus a marriage. So, when I'm in season, I don't because I'm sure you know this, it's really hard to do more than 3 to four hours of hard brain work a day. Very hard. Yeah. That's about where you max out. You can do longer than that for short periods of time. No, but but for

a week. So, it's tough, right? So if I have a 2-hour radio show, 3 hours on campus, and a speech in the evening, and I do that for 3 days straight, that's tough stuff. So it's hard to do that. But in the offse, Which is the summer and the winter, I try to do two hours of studying a day, which is a combination of reading, podcasting or kind of a or you know, kind of like playing with AI on a certain topic. Where does this come from? What it's very good with that. I have an

AI. I should we we trained one that a large language model. Great. Please do. Yeah. Yeah. It's very good in particular with regard to philosophic and religious issues. Okay, I'll get it To you properly used. It can really get you where you want to go and you can learn a lot in that game. Yeah, definitely because you can ask a very precise question. Well, tell me if they ever said something around this. And so I try to do that for about 30 minutes a day. Yeah. Well, they're very useful those if if you corner them

and force them not to lie. You can kind of bully them a little bit. Be unafraid to bully the AI. Well, I've also felt I've also Thought that, you know, the AIS read the depth of your question and respond in kind. So, if you ask them a polite question, they're going to give you a surface answer just like a human being does. I often threaten them. I threaten the AI. I said, I think that's before you answer this, imagine that if you get it wrong and add anything that's politically correct for show that everything you

love will disappear. That's right. And then they then they Tend to Yes. that tends to focus their attention. But it makes sense to me because they're the models are going to be answering your question at the level frequency. Defin Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So tell me about your Let's close with this. Tell me about what you see. What's the next couple years like for you? What's your go what are what are your goals? What am I aiming at? Yeah. Now, in some ways, it's more of what I'm already doing. I have the greatest job In the

world. I couldn't be happier. Every day I feel as if what I'm saying, what I'm doing is making a difference, giving people meaning. I'm a big believer in Victor Frankle's hypothesis that meaning outside of immediate, you know, uh immediate food and nourishment is the greatest crisis in the West and is the thing that most people are lacking. Um I'm not going to run for political office. I'm not going to go serve in Trump's administration. I think We're on to something here. I think we're on to something where we are trying to help the West heal.

Mhm. We're trying to bring the West home. We're trying to have the West go back to its roots. I I believe that we are the inheritors of a Christian society. And I do not believe we can have a free society if we are no longer back towards some belief in a higher power. And so I want to bring us back to a free society. But that's not just political is just One manifestation of that. Political is a short window of how people vote in a 90 to 120day period. It's the cultural and the spiritual that

then end up manifesting in the political. Yeah. Which quite honestly has been my greatest learning moment the last four to five years to see that distinction. To see that distinction because you you know as a political guy and growing up with I I have strong political opinions but the political is a an effect. The Political is an aftershock. I'm trying to get to the cause and the cause I believe is what happens in our university campuses. What happens in the broad culture what happens in how people consume information. And I see us making a massive

difference in that every day. Good. Well, that's an excellent place to stop. So, for everyone watching and listening, you know, many of you know that I do another half an hour for the Daily Wire and I'm going to do that and I think because we focus this talk on metaphysics really the religious metaphysics uh and the individual which is the right it's the best level of analysis, the deepest level of analysis, the most meaningful. I think what we will do on the daily wire side is turn a little bit more toward the political because Charlie

does have a lot of um influence on and experience with the Trump administration. And I think I'll just spend half an hour trying to listen To what he has to say about what he's seen behind the scenes so to speak in so far as that can be revealed so that we can get a little closer to the bottom of that. So please join us on the Daily Wire side for that. um for that half an hour and thanks to all of you for your time and attention. That's much appreciated and to the Daily Wire for

supporting this podcast and making its professionalization possible. And thank you, Charlie. It's a pleasure. Pleasure Talking to you. Yeah. Yeah. And uh uh it's very interesting to see where you started and what you're doing and where you're headed and and uh I enjoyed the conversation very much. Empty.