Debunking the Left's Lie of a Socialist 'Utopia'

Summary

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The Charlie Kirk Show: "Debunking the Left's Lie of a Socialist 'Utopia'"

Date: December 17, 2020
Host: Charlie Kirk
Guest: Bill Federer (Historian, Author of Socialism: The Real History From Plato to the Present)

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Charlie Kirk is joined by noted historian and author Bill Federer to trace the philosophical and historical origins of socialism, challenging its portrayal as a path to utopia. Through a sweeping journey from Plato through Rousseau, Marx, and modern political movements, the conversation explores how societies that seek to create a “heaven on earth” via centralized control risk instead duplicating failed systems marked by the loss of individual freedoms.

With an unapologetically conservative lens, Kirk and Federer critique the left's economic and political prescriptions, warning about their realist consequences as seen throughout history and drawing stark contrasts with American founding principles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Philosophical Roots of Socialist Thinking

• Plato’s Structured Society as Proto-Socialism
  (02:54–06:45)
  • Bill Federer introduces Plato’s Republic as the foundational text for structured societies with a ruling class and a ruled class.
  • Plato disdained democracy for its lack of structure and tolerance that eventually leads to chaos, quoting Plato’s preference for “one grand lie which will be believed by everybody.”

    “Plato said...‘we want one grand lie which will be believed by everybody.’” — Bill Federer (06:31)

• The Move from Plato to More and Bacon
  (07:46–13:46)
  • Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis further the idea of a highly regulated society, centralized planning, and communal property, which the Pilgrims initially attempted and found disastrous.

2. Utopian Socialism Meets Reality

• Pilgrims’ Experiment with Communal Living
  (13:46–15:30)
  • The Pilgrims’ attempt at communism, inspired by earlier European thinkers, led to near starvation. Private property was reinstated as a solution.

    “He says this experiment...was tried by good and honest men and it failed, proving the emptiness of the theory of Plato.” — Bill Federer (13:46)

3. Ideals vs. Real-World Outcomes: Plato vs. Aristotle

• (15:30–16:56)
  • Kirk likens the perennial divide to Raphael’s painting: Plato looking to the heavens (theoretical, utopian), Aristotle to the earth (practical, realistic).

    “Let’s see what actual the data shows us, really what’s happening.” — Charlie Kirk (16:03)

  • Campuses as centers of impractical idealism are discussed.

4. French Revolution and the Hegelian Dialectic

• French Revolution’s Descent from Utopia to Terror
  (16:56–21:32)
  • The French Revolution’s drive for “liberty, equality, fraternity” soon justified mass executions, morphing noble-sounding ideals into violence and dictatorship.
  • The meaning of “fraternity” as socialism’s collective sentiment versus American individualism is explored.

    “Equality can be understood two ways. In America, it was equal treatment before the law, equal opportunity. In France, it was everyone having an equal amount of stuff.” — Bill Federer (18:20)

• Hegel and Marx: Manufacturing Crises for Power
  (21:52–24:32)
  • Hegel’s dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) progresses society by contrived conflict, a model co-opted by Marx for class struggle.

    “You start off with the status quo. You create a problem that’s real bad, and everybody’s happy to settle for your answer that’s half as bad.” — Bill Federer (22:05)

5. From Contract to Covenant: Roots of Rights

• Social Contract Theory, Rousseau, and Rights
  (25:56–29:46)
  • Rousseau viewed the state as supreme, even justifying the state’s right to require a citizen’s death for the greater good.

    “‘If the state says to an individual it is expedient for the state that you should die, that individual should die because his life is a gift made conditionally by the state.’” — Bill Federer, quoting Rousseau (26:26)

  • The panel contrasts covenantal government—where rights are granted by God—with Enlightenment social contracts, culminating in Marxism, where the state becomes God.

6. The Consequences of Removing God and Virtue

• (29:46–35:18)
  • The trend from the American Pilgrim covenant to Enlightenment deism, French Revolutionary atheism, and finally Marxist statism is traced, highlighting the risks when morality and rights are no longer grounded in a transcendent authority.

    “If there is no God, then your rights come from the state. And what the state giveth, the state can taketh awayeth.” — Bill Federer (31:23)

  • Nietzsche’s critique of Christian “fumes” sustaining morality even among atheists is referenced.

7. Models of Government and Human Motivation (Montesquieu)

• (35:18–38:29)
  • Montesquieu’s tripartite model (republics by virtue, monarchies by honor, despots by fear) provides a framework to understand the frailties of each system.

8. Lessons from the 20th Century: How Socialist Methods Destroy Republics

• Nazi Germany and the Rise of Dictatorship
  (41:00–44:16)
  • The Nazi party's use of “brown shirts” (compared to BLM and Antifa) is cited as an example of leveraging chaos for centralization of power.
• Soviet, Chinese, and CIA Tactics in Political Upheaval
  (44:19–49:52)
  • Both USSR and USA used similar tactics of fomenting division, staging riots, and co-opting media to effect regime change across the world. Federer claims such methods are now visible within the United States.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[Socialism is] a cultural bait and switch. It promises heaven, delivers hell... It always sounds promising, but it ends up delivering death.”
  — Bill Federer (16:56)

• “When somebody protests the flag, what they’re saying is, I don’t want to be the king anymore. I protest this system where I participate in ruling myself.”
  — Bill Federer (49:59)

• “We sort of have national Alzheimer’s here. We are the freest country that planet Earth has ever seen with more individual opportunity and choices. And we forgot how we got here. We forgot who we are.”
  — Bill Federer (52:12)

• “All technology does is magnify. You get a good person, like yourself, they’ll use it for good... [A bad person] will use all this fancy technology for something wrong. So technology just magnifies what’s in the human heart and history is the record of that.”
  — Bill Federer (53:33)

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Key Takeaways & Warnings

• History is not prophetic but predictive. Knowing the failures and corruption tied to socialist experiments throughout history lets us see patterns repeating today. (02:54)
• Competing visions: Plato and later utopians dreamt of heaven on earth via control; the American experiment is premised on individual God-given rights, not state-bestowed privileges.
• Why “rights from God” matters: If rights come from government, they can be taken away at will. Anchoring rights outside temporal authority guards against tyranny. (31:23)
• Tactics of subversion: Manufacturing crises, radicalizing divisions, and seizing power under the guise of solving chaos have been used by socialists, communists, fascists, and are echoed in modern political movements.

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Timestamps for Important Sections

• Plato and Socialism’s Origins: 02:54–07:46
• Pilgrim Socialism's Failure: 13:46–15:30
• Plato vs. Aristotle and Modern Academia: 15:30–16:56
• French Revolution & Hegel’s Dialectic: 16:56–24:32
• Marx, Hegel, and Modern ‘Crisis’ Politics: 21:32–25:56
• Social Contract Theory (Rousseau): 25:56–29:46
• Montesquieu on Forms of Government: 35:18–38:29
• Nazi Germany, Soviet, & CIA Interventions: 41:00–49:52
• Civil Solutions & Call to Civic Action: 49:52–53:26

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Closing Notes

Bill Federer urges listeners to rediscover America’s true roots and recognize deceptive calls to utopia that mask the path to tyranny. Civic engagement, a recommitment to self-government, and a return to virtue are put forth as antidotes to attempts at socialist transformation.

Connect with Bill Federer and his historical analysis at americanminute.com.

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Summary prepared for listeners who want depth, context, and a clear map through the episode’s complex—and urgent—argument.

Transcript

[Charlie Kirk]

Hey, everybody.

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

Super important episode. If you want to support our program, it's charliekirk.com support. Email us your questions freedomarliekirk.com and if you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com Buckle up, everybody. Here we go.

[Bill Federer]

Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

[Charlie Kirk]

Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

[Bill Federer]

I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

[Guest Speaker/Supporter]

I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point usa.

[Charlie Kirk]

We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

are going to fight for freedom on

[Charlie Kirk]

campuses across the country. That's why we are here.

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

Truth is so important to me. Pursuing truth is a huge part of who I am and what I stand for. When you look around at what's happening to our country, you can see why many people are experiencing real frustration with the news media, along with feelings of uncertainty and a lack of hope for the future. How can we know which news is true? And where or in whom can we place our trust? The only place I found unwavering truth and peace is in my faith in Jesus Christ. If 2020 has beaten down your spirit, I'd like to recommend a book to you called Reflections on the Existence of God by best selling author, Richard Simmons iii. Reflections on the Existence of God is a collection of short essays that tackles the biggest question of all. Does God exists? This book is well researched and easy to read. Former White House aide Wallace Henley says, quote, I've taught apologetics for many years and have read every scholar mentioned in this book. Of all the books on apologetics, Simmons is the best I have ever read. If you want to challenge yourself to spiritual and intellectual growth, then be willing to ask yourself life's toughest questions. I challenge you right now. To get your copy of Reflections on the Existence of God by Richard Simmons III, go to reflectionscharley.com that's reflectionscharlie.com

[Charlie Kirk]

hey everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show. I am personally super excited for this episode. I'm excited for all my episodes, but this one in particular. I have my notepad and my pen ready to go because this man I have learned more about history from than I can say anyone else.

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

Bill Federer.

[Charlie Kirk]

Welcome to the Charlie Kirk show. Officially.

[Bill Federer]

Charlie, great to be with you.

[Charlie Kirk]

You run americanminute.com, you are the walking Encyclopedia of Western Civilization and of History. I've learned so much from you. I read your email every morning and some people say, Charlie, where do you get your information? Say, to know what's going on today, just go back in time a little bit. And we've known each other for years, but just in the last 18 months in particular, I've just really grown in appreciation for, for the research you've been doing. So, Bill, tell us about the book you just wrote and then we can go from there into current events or any direction this takes us.

[Bill Federer]

Yeah, well, I tell people history is not prophetic, but it is predictive. So past behavior is the best indicator of future performance. So we can look back at the past and get a trajectory of where things, things are going. And that's sort of what I do in this book called Socialism the Real History From Plato to the Present. For those that are not familiar with the book, Plato lived 380 BC in Athens. It was a democracy, but he didn't really like a democracy. In passing, Plato mentions several times of Atlantis, this highly advanced civilization that sinks in the sea. But it was structured and he liked that. And he considered a democracy an unstructured society. And he says the chief characteristic of a democracy is tolerance. Everybody tolerates each other. He calls it charming. It's like an embroidery patchwork with lots of colors, like a bizarre marketplace where you can buy anything. And then they tolerate people that are a little bit off, and then they tolerate people that are a lot off till finally they're tolerating crooks and crime and fraud and broad daylight looting and nobody does anything about it. And then it creeps into their handling of finances. And it's a democracy, so they vote to spread the city treasury around and, and now the treasury is empty. And then they vote to take the money from the rich people. Now there's no rich people left. And then there's a shortage and they begin to bicker and finally turns into chaos. And the people begin to say, can't someone come along and fix this mess? And that's when some governor comes along and says, I can fix it. I just need some emergency powers. And he says, at first they're all smiles and charming, but then they finally stand in the chariot of state holding the reins of power and they're revealed as the tyrant. And if anybody objects to their will, they have a pretense of destroying them. And so here's Plato's scenarios that democracy without the people having morals and virtue ends in domestic chaos, out of which Some tyrant usurps power. And so that's the beginning model. Then he says that it's inevitable because he says people really don't have morals and virtues. He says if you give them a choice of giving up their life or giving up their virtue, they'll always give up their virtue to save their life. Now, ancient Israel's model had a big magnet in the sky called God. And so people were virtuous for a little bit longer. Went on a couple more centuries, but it finally cratered. And then they got a king, a King Saul. But in Plato's time, the people really didn't believe their deities were these fickle Greek personalities that nobody really believed in. And so it wasn't like you're accountable to a God. It was. And so Plato said, it's just a matter of time till this democracy experiment is going to end in this social chaos. And so he said, the best you can hope for is a nice tyrant. He called him a philosopher king. He is the head of gold and his administrators, his deep state political crony enforcers. They are the arms and chest of silver. Together they make up the ruling class. And everyone else is the abdomen of iron and bronze. And they are in the ruled class. And so socialism is a structured society of a ruling class and a ruled class. And Plato goes on, he says, the ruled class own no property, they have no privacy. The government decides who gets to have kids. The government takes the kids away from the parents before they've been affected with the habits of the parents. They bring them into the city and indoctrinate them with noble lies. Actually calls them lies. He says, we want one grand lie which will be believed by everybody.

[Charlie Kirk]

Plato said that.

[Bill Federer]

Plato said that right in the Republic, we want one grand lie which will be believed by everybody. And. And so that's the origin. So when you study all socialism, it all goes back to Plato, the structured society.

[Charlie Kirk]

I'm so glad you mentioned that, Bill. So a mentor of mine also mentioned, he said that the line of socialism, it's not a complete line, went from Plato to Rousseau to Marx. That's probably a good summarization of it. It's not total, you know, it's not a perfect through line. But Plato was one of the first thinkers who of course, learned under Socrates. Socrates was killed. Plato then taught Aristotle, and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. It's just interesting kind of history that I learned from. From you. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. I'm just saying it for the audience's own their own benefit. But Plato was really big into the abolition of private property and the destruction of the nuclear family and really creating.

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

Could you argue, Bill, I guess I'm

[Charlie Kirk]

saying this and I'm asking myself the question, was he trying to create a utopia? Was it an idea of trying to create almost a heaven on earth aspect?

[Bill Federer]

Yeah, it was his ideal structured society. And he lived in Athens as you mentioned. Socrates lived when there was a war and the Athens navy fought and the ships had some sailors fall in the water in the middle of the battle and the admiral was, was not able to rescue all the sailors and they get back and the people of Athens were so upset at this admiral for not rescuing the sailors that fell in the water that they got whipped up into a frenzy and then killed the admiral. And Socrates saw this, basically it just turned into this lynch mob. And so Socrates view of democracy was this mob rule. And so that's why Plato did not like it. And he said it's just going to, it'll work for a while as long as that. It's in to be virtuous. And then he goes through five steps. He goes first. It's in to be virtuous. And the city state will be run by lovers of principle and virtue. And these are people that know how to run farms, they know how to run businesses, maybe they know how to run really big businesses. And they're lovers of principle and truth and they do a good job. The city grows. Then a second group wants to get involved in politics. Plato called them lovers of fame. These are people that have no real experience running anything. They just somehow got famous, maybe a Greek actor or a Greek Olympic athlete or maybe like a Hollywood action hero that gets to be governor of California. And you think, you know, what did Arnold run before he became the governor? Nothing, he was just famous. Now Plato says these famous people, they love fame so much they hate being defamed. So these you can manipulate with public opinion. The first group, they're going to do what's right no matter what you say about them. The second group, they'll bend when you say things about them. And so since they don't know how to run stuff, they end up yielding to the human temptation of avarice or selfishness. And they can't help but funnel a little money to their friends, a little money to their supporters, a little money to some brother in law's company. Before you know it, it turns into a two tiered society of the insider clique and then the outsiders. And then Plato again says that they'll throw the bums out, set up a democracy and it's charming. And then finally their democracy gets taken over by a tyrant. But if we fast forward from Plato 2000 years, we go to Columbus discovering America. 20 years later, sir Thomas More writes Island of Utopia. It's a word. Utopia means nowhere. It's a fictitious island off the coast of South America, supposedly discovered by Amerigo Vespucci. And it's written as a Greek dialogue, right? So Plato writes as a dialogue with Socrates. Well, this is a dialogue with a guy named Hythlodeus, which means peddler of nonsense. And so this utopia, told by this peddler of nonsense, is a structured society of a ruling class and a ruled class. And the ruled class again own no property. Everything is stored in a communal warehouse. They have no possessions. There's. Everyone lives in identical three story houses. There's no locks on any doors. There's no ale houses or coffee houses or tea houses, no places for private meetings. There's no privacy. None whatsoever. The government tracks everybody, everywhere you go, with an internal passport. If you're caught without it, it's a lifetime of slavery. And the government decides who gets to have children. And then the government takes the children away from the parents and indoctrinates them with lies and chooses their careers that they have to work the entire rest of their life. This is Utopia. This is the island of Utopia. Now that was 1516 and Sir Thomas More wrote it as a veiled jab at Henry viii, who was wanting to rule everyone's lives. He switches from being Catholic to Protestant and then Anglican and then he. And so Sir Thomas More was killed by Henry viii. So anyway, but then we fast forward another century and you have Sir Francis Bacon, he writes the New Atlantis. So he's directly referring to Plato's Atlantis. This is a fictitious. So this is the time of Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, that period beginning of the Scientific revolution. And so Sir Francis Bacon has an island in the South Pacific off the coast of Peru. And it's highly structured, little more scientific careers that everybody's working. But it's still a structured society. And someone wrote a satire on it, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Right. Gulliver is washed up on this island of Lilliput, and it's a structured society with this ridiculous ruling class and then everybody else that has their fates determined by that. And now why is this important? The Pilgrims. So the early 1600s, the Pilgrims were originally a company colony with bylaws written by investors that looked back to Plato, Sir Thomas Morse or Francis Bacon. And lo and behold, the pilgrim bylaws said everything would be owned in common, everything would be gained by cooking, hunting, fishing, trading jungle into ye common stock. And everyone's livelihood comes out of ye common stock. And William Bradford said they almost starved to death. He says the young men objected to doing twice as much work as the old guy, but didn't get paid anymore. The old guy considered it an indignity to be classed in labor with the young men. And then he says the women objected to having to wash other men's clothes. And William Bradford said they almost starved to death. So we had to come up with a fitter plan. They gave everyone their own plot of land. He said this made all hands more industrious. The women now went willingly into the field and took their little ones with them where before they would allege weakness and to a force and would have been great oppression. So here we have, and believe it or not, William Bradford, the governor of the Pilgrims, writes. He says that this experiment of communal service was tried by good and honest men and it failed, proving the emptiness of the theory of Plato, applauded recently by scholars in Europe. So the Pilgrims knew they were trying to act out this theoretical and so that's what socialism is. It's a theoretical proposition that looks good on a chalkboard, but it fails miserably. It's the eternal bait and switch

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

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[Bill Federer]

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[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

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[Charlie Kirk]

and that was the big contrast between Plato and Aristotle. And it is wonderfully summarized in that famous painting, I think by Raphael where Plato is pointing up and Aristotle is pointing to the ground, almost like Plato is dealing in the clouds in the ideal. And Aristotle is saying, let's look what actually works. Let's be more realistic. That's where we get that word from. Let's see what actual the data shows us really what's happening. And Aristotle being a scientist, Plato had the academy and Aristotle had the lyceum. Is that right?

[Bill Federer]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kirk]

My history right there, where Aristotle being better versed in the actual applied sciences. A lot of our scientific method can be actually to what Aristotle combined. And you can see the kind of divergence here in a lot of different ways in the west of how we process the correct way to govern ourselves. It's not a perfect fit. But Plato dealing much more in the theoretical, much more in the ideal, you can see why so many university campuses are places of people that are filled with ideas that would never have any sort of applicability in the real world.

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

It almost doesn't concern them.

[Charlie Kirk]

It would be much more. They'd worry much more about what would almost the, I want to say narrative, but what they would considered to be working on a chalkboard or in this kind of idea space. And would you consider that to be a correct summarization?

[Bill Federer]

Yeah, yeah. And it goes, it goes from being a benign error to dangerous. And now when the COVID just happened, I couldn't help but see an article where some nature people had planned to go to Panama and they had some spot along the beach and they sort of lived like that survivor program, you know, it was back to nature and they were going have this wonderful time. Well then when Covid hit Panama would not allow them to fly out of the country. And they were trapped there. And then it got to the place where they began to bicker amongst themselves and fight and say, now don't take my stuff and you know, and this is mine. And they would end up, you know, long and short of it. This beautiful experiment of let's all go live back in nature turned into this gang of, of people bickering amongst themselves. And so that's where socialism is. This promised dream that delivers a nightmare. It's a cultural bait and switch. It promises heaven delivers hell, but it's always there, the sirens. So when Ulysses leaves and he's sailing through the island, the Greek islands, there's an island, there's one of the islands where there are women that sing and they're called sirens. We think of siren today as on an ambulance. But back then these were pretty women that stood along the cliffs on the shore and would sing and the sailors would get close to hear them only to crash on the rocks. And then all the villagers would come out and get all the stuff that was lost on the rocks. And so this was the sirens song is this. It always sounds promising, but it ends up delivering death. And that's what socialism is. Now, if we fast forward to the French Revolution. So we have a revolution. France has a revolution. They helped us during our revolution and you know what they got in return? Nothing but debt. They help us and they don't get any special trade rides. They don't usually you fight a big war, you get something in return. France got nothing. And then they had a couple of years where their crops failed and the people blamed King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette. She's the one where they told him the people didn't have cake or bread. And she said, let them eat cake. You know, that quote is debated, but yeah, yeah. And so they decided to if they could just chop off the King and Queen's heads, their problems will be solved. Well, they chop them off. It doesn't get any better. Then they decide if they can chop off the heads of all the royalty, the problems will be solved. Doesn't get any better. Then they chop off the heads of all the wealthy. They have money, we don't. They're selfish. Doesn't get any better. Then they chop off the heads of all the business owners and farmers. They have food and supplies. We don't. Doesn't get any better. Then they chop off the heads of the hoarders, the people that have extra stuff. You got extra? I don't have enough. You're selfish. Then they chopped off the heads of the preachers who in the clergy and whole orders of nuns because they were speaking out against the head, chopping off stuff. Then they chopped off the heads of the former revolutionaries, the ones that used to chop off heads but got tired of it somehow. They're to blame. They were purged. 40,000 people had their heads chopped off in Paris, France. And then they sent their army to the Vendee and killed 300,000. The first modern genocide. And so here we have this motto for the French Revolution was liberte, egalitae, fraternite, liberty, equality, fraternity. Fraternity was the French word for socialism. It's the collective. It's the group it's the fraternity. And so equality can be understood two ways. In America, it was equal treatment before the law, equal opportunity. In France, it was everyone having an equal amount of stuff. And if the fraternity, the group, thinks you have too much stuff, it can use the power of the state to take away your stuff and kill you. And so that's what happened. They chopped off all these heads and killed everybody. And then what? Democracy without morals and virtue ends in chaos. And out of that, a Napoleon arose. And then Napoleon conquers across Europe, 6 million people die. And one of the places Napoleon conquered was Prussia, a German kingdom. And the king afterwards said, we can't let that happen again. We need to strengthen the state. And so he gets a philosopher named Hegel at the University of Berlin. And Hegel says, the state is God walking on earth. This state is our mortal God. All the work that a human being has, he has only through the state. And. And so a student at the University

[Charlie Kirk]

of Berlin was Karl Marx.

[Bill Federer]

Karl Marx. And so now this is the sort of the second phase of my book. Hegel said he wanted to concentrate power into the state so it won't be conquered by another Napoleon. And so he comes up with something called Hegelian dialectics. And it's a triangle.

[Charlie Kirk]

And we've talked about this before in our program, but it's very complicated. If you can explain the Hegelian dialectic, God bless you, please, I'll learn alongside our listeners. I could do an okay job of it.

[Bill Federer]

So it's a triangle. One corner is a thesis, the opposite corner is an antithesis or antithesis, and the top corner is the synthesis. It's really simple. You start off with the status quo. You create a problem that's real bad, and everybody's happy to settle for your answer that's half as bad. And then that becomes the new thesis starting point. And then you create another problem that's real bad, and everybody settles for your answer that's half as bad. That becomes the new starting point. You create another problem that's real bad. Everybody settles for the answer. It's half as bad. You keep doing this. And at each crisis, people surrender a little bit more of their independence, their freedoms, their rights in exchange to have this real bad crisis just be a semi bad crisis, right? And so Karl Marx, who was a member of the Young Hegelians at the University of Berlin. Brilliant. Karl Marx says, well, how do you create an antithesis? You send in agitators, agent provocateurs, community organizers, labor organizers. Their job is to identify groups with grievances and stir them into rioting. And it was, they'd be the proletariat against the bourgeois, which is the working class against the business owners. They'd organize the blacks against the whites, the Muslims against the Christians, the Catholics against the Protestants, even the Hutus against the Tutsis in the Congo and Rwanda. They really don't care who the two sides are and they really don't care what the issues are. Their goal is a destabilizing crisis that makes everyone panic that they give up their freedoms so that some dictator can usurp power. And so this model was used over and over again. And it's interesting, and interrupt me at any time that Britain used a variation of this to take over India. So 1714, the British lands in Bengal and they open up a trading post that turns into a fort that's filled full of guns. And then they give guns to one kingdom and then they give guns to another kingdom. Then they stir up ancient animosities and the two kingdoms fight and beat each other up. And when they're all worn out, the British come in and conquer both. And then they did it again and again and again until they took over all of India. A quarter of the world's population came underneath British control through this. They tried doing it in America when they would incite the natives on the frontiers to butcher the people on the frontiers during the, you know, the revolution, the War of 1812. And so this idea that you go in and identify groups with grievances and you stir them up to riot.

[Charlie Kirk]

And that's similar to what's happening today in America. The left, they are trying to kind of re embody the teachings of the young Hegelians. Maybe a little bit Antonio Gramscian there too, of cultural Marxism, but there definitely is an idea of trying to turn people against each other intentionally and then try to have a new starting point. And Hegel was intentionally hard to read. I have not read Hegel. I understand some of what he said. I admit to it. I have no interest. I didn't say interest. I have no capacity or the patience to read the Phenomenology of Spirit. Not exactly something that you've probably read it and you probably can read it in the original German. But Hegel was a huge inspiration because he was a systemic thinker similar to Immanuel Kant, similar to some of the kind of really big, kind of just landscape altering thinkers of the post Renaissance period. He introduced a new system of thinking. And so can you now bring us to. So Marx learned under Hegel. Rousseau also really impacted Marx as far as valuing the primitive over the civilized, the infant over the adult, the collective over private. Jean Jacques Rousseau, being a French philosopher who I believe was before the French Revolution. Am I correct?

[Bill Federer]

Right. He's actually called the father of the French Revolution. And. But you got your stuff done.

[Charlie Kirk]

Great.

[Bill Federer]

I'm very impressed.

[Charlie Kirk]

And I read the American Minute. That's why I'm not getting.

[Bill Federer]

One of the quotes from Rousseau is he said, this is Jean Jacques Rousseau in his book the Social Contract. He says, if the state says to an individual, it is expedient for the state that you should die. That individual should die because his life is a gift made conditionally.

[Charlie Kirk]

So say that again.

[Bill Federer]

So this is Jean Jacques Rousseau, and he says in the Social Contract, if the state says to an individual, it is expedient for the state that you should die. That individual should die because his life is a gift made conditionally by the state.

[Charlie Kirk]

And so there are. Yeah, that's really important because there are different ways to view the Social contract. The three big thinkers when it comes to social contract would be Thomas Hobbes, then it would be Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Locke. They all had a different opinion of what our social contract would be. But this actually applies to today's politics because the left in America, they would agree with Rousseau's opinion. They would say, if the state deems you unnecessary, of course we can eliminate you.

[Bill Federer]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting when you look at four steps. The first step is the pilgrims. So after they scrapped their company bylaws, they instituted a covenant protocol form of government. Now, what's a covenant? It's like a triangle in the sense that it's people in agreement with each other. But it's more than just an agreement. It's a commitment to each other. So it's people committed to caring for each other. Why? Because they're all individually accountable to God and they get their individual rights from God. So it's like a triangle. You got God at the top. You get the God giving rights to individuals. The people are committed to caring for each other because they're personally accountable to this God at the top. The next century after the pilgrims is the Age of Enlightenment. And this is where covenant turns into social contract. And it's just people in agreement with each other. And if God is there, he's distant. So this comes out of the scientific revolution, where you have Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac Newton discovering laws of planetary motion, laws of gravity, and Kepler's laws of planetary motion. And Robert Boyle, laws of pressure. And so some theologians said, well, gee, maybe God made everything with laws. And like a guy winds up a clock and sets it on the shelf, everything is just following these gears and laws. And so if God is there, he is distant, he's impersonal, he's not involved in our lives. And the ultimate of this is God is some impersonal force in the universe, right? So we go from this pilgrim covenant where you're intimately committed to caring for each other because you're personally accountable to a God. In the next century, covenant turns into social contract with a distant God. Next century turned into the French Revolution, which is social contract with no God intentionally. No God they actually didn't want done in the year of the Lord. So they made 1792 the new year one. They didn't want a seven day week with a Sabbath rest because it went to the Bible. So they came up with a 10 day week called a decade week. Each day had 10 hours, each hour had 100 minutes, each minute had 100 seconds. They said that 10 was the number of man with. You count with 10 fingers. So they made every measurement in France divisible by 10. They called it the metric system. Maybe that's why I never really liked the metric system, but it was an intention.

[Charlie Kirk]

Is that really how they came up? I didn't know that was the origination of the metric system.

[Bill Federer]

Yeah, they made every measurement divisible by 10 because that's the number of man because you have 10 fingers that you count with. And then Napoleon spreads this all around Europe. And So for, for 14 years, the French Republic is using French Revolution time. They rename the months, they rename the days of the week because you got these decade weeks. And, and so France is, they turn churches into temples of reason. Robespierre was the head of their home, Maximilien Robespierre. And he put a prostitute in Notre Dame Cathedral, covered her with a sheet and said, this is the goddess of reason, let's worship her. I mean, they intentionally wanted to erase God. They dug up the bones of St. Genevieve, the young woman that got all of Paris to fast and pray back in 450 AD when Attila the Hun was scourging Europe.

[Charlie Kirk]

And this is run by the Jacobins, right?

[Bill Federer]

So the Jacobeans were like the, the antifa blm.

[Charlie Kirk]

I mean they were a great comparison.

[Bill Federer]

Build that out, everything down, tear everything down, tear everything down. And then somehow, miraculously, some good's going to come out of this mess you just made, when in fact all that happens is a Napoleon seizes power or some dictator or some tyrant. And so what we we see is we go from pilgrim covenant with the personal God to the Age of Enlightenment social contract with a distant God, to the French Revolution social contract with no God, to Marxism and socialism where the state is God.

[Charlie Kirk]

That's such a perfect compare. That's a great way to lay that out.

[Bill Federer]

So all the social contract stuff is great, but they always get rid of God. And now why is that important that we have God in there? If there is no God, then your rights come from the state. And what the state giveth, the state can taketh awayeth. And there's a great quote from Eisenhower. He said in some lands the state claims to be the author of human rights. If the state gives rights, it can and inevitably will take away those rights. He goes on, our founding fathers had to refer to the Creator in order to make the revolutionary experiment make sense. In other words, we had to go above the King's head, we went above the Pharaoh's head, above Caesar's head, and we said we have rights that come from a Creator that no government on earth can take away. As a matter of fact, the government's job is to protect our God given rights. But if there is no God, you don't have any rights to give you and then the state becomes God.

[Charlie Kirk]

So what would your argument then be to the counter as someone would say, who would be more in the, let's say David Hume category where they would believe in Enlightenment values? They would say no, your rights are based in nature, not nature's God. But this is kind of a very, this is a new kind of belief that has really taken root in some atheist communities where they say it's not the state, it's just who you are in the natural condition. John Locke would sympathize with this, but John Locke being a Christian would disagree with it. Can you reinforce how it's only a rights giver that could give you rights, it's not an accident. And how imperative that is to keep our civilization intact.

[Bill Federer]

Right, so Nietzsche, who the God is dead type of philosopher, he criticized the other atheists in England, saying that you're basically living off the fumes of Christianity

[Charlie Kirk]

that you're saying he was talking at Hume basically, right?

[Bill Federer]

Yeah, he was saying that, that you're saying that if you don't have a God that you'll be a moral person. But he says the morals that you're holding up are Judeo Christian morals. And why are you bothering holding up those Judeo Christian morals. If there is no Judeo Christian, if there is no God, why are you so the fact that you even identify good as a doing to others that you would have them do unto you, you're still following the residual leftovers of a Judeo Christian culture. And then I keep going back to Plato. If someone says we'll be good, it's like, okay, I'm going to give you a choice. You maintain your goodness or you die, right? People will give up their morals, they'll give up their virtue. If their life is on the line, they're going to say, okay, I'm holding these personal values, but if I'm going to die for it, forget the values. Whereas in the Judeo Christian model, you're going to keep those values because you're accountable in the next life to this God who wants you to be truthful, that wants you to be honest and want you to be fair, you're trusting him with your life, right? And so when they say, well, we don't need God, we'll just be good, it's like, no, if you get rid of God, if you really believe that, go into an inner city, take that, take out your wallet and set it on the sidewalk and come back the next day, see if it's still there. Most people, if there's no consequence for their action, they will yield to their selfish side. And this goes all the way back to Cain, Kill and Abel. It's just part of selfish human nature. So selfishness is the default setting for human nature. And to pull away from that, you need we're consequence. Don't want to get too philosophical, but Montesquieu was a French political philosopher.

[Charlie Kirk]

He was a French judge, and he

[Bill Federer]

was the most quoted of the writers by the founding fathers of anybody other than the Bible. So this Montesquieu had a big impact on the founders, and he divided governments into three.

[Charlie Kirk]

He was inspired by Cicero a lot.

[Bill Federer]

And so different philosophers divide governments differently. But Montesquieu's model was republic, monarch, despot. So he says republics are based where the people are the king and the people have to have virtue. He calls it a spring. But it's more or less the electricity that runs through a republic that makes it come alive is the people having virtue. And he goes, this is most prevalent in the northern Protestant countries of Europe. He says a monarch, he says that they motivate people through honor and shame. Honor, shame, culture. You do what the monarch says, you get to be a sir or a knight, you get some land, you don't do what the monarch said. He strips you of your titles and you're ridiculed and ostracized. And. And he says that virtue is not necessary for a monarchy, that you will do what brings you honor, even if it's a little bit illegal. If you get honored for it, it's okay. And he says that the monarchs are most visible in the Catholic countries of Europe. He says a religion with a visible head is more likely to want to have a government with a visible head. Now, what's the difference between a monarch and a despot? A monarch still has strings attached. He still can be accountable to a God that wants him to be fair because you know he's going to be judged in the next life. And so the king still, he's not totally free, but a despot, according to Montesquieu, is a string, is a king with no strings attached. And he just rules by his whims and caprices. He can wake up one day and decide to chop somebody's head off or wake up another day and decide to take somebody's wife. And he says despots are most prevalent in Muslim countries like the Ottoman Empire. And he says that the electricity, what he called the spring that makes the despot work is fear. Fear is the motivating factor, why everybody obeys the despot. And if you think of it, the the republic, monarch, despot model, it's. It's almost like a spirit, mind and body. So the republic, the people are virtuous, you feel safe because everybody has virtue. And you're doing what's right because you're going to be rewarded or punished in the next life. The monarch is through shame and honor. That's more of a mental thing or the soulish realm. And then the despots motivate through pleasure and pain. You do what he says, you get a harem. You don't do what he says, you get your hand chopped off. Right. And so it's sort of a spirit, mind and body, but it's positive and negative motivations. One's in the next life, one's in the mental realm, and one's in the physical realm.

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

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[Charlie Kirk]

It's incredible and I think that if you read the Federalist Papers, no person was more influential to the founding and the formation of government than Montesquieu. And maybe John Locke. From a philosophical standpoint, maybe. But Montesquieu in spirit of laws I think is the name of the book that he wrote. Was a French judge and Madison had a great quote about Montesquieu saying he called him the oracle. Madison called Montesquieu the oracle. Anyway, we're getting very philosophical, which is very important. But can you bring it back to kind of what we're living through today? What parts of history do you think are most instructions destructive to make sense of what we're living through today?

[Bill Federer]

Well if we pick up with Hegel and then we had Karl Marx and then let's go to Germany and we'll go to the 1920s and we have, it's a republic, the Weimar Republic and it's a bottom up form of government, right? The people are involved in their government. And then you have someone start a political party. It's called the National Socialist Workers Party or Nazi. And the head of it is Adolf Hitler. And he has his brown shirts, which is a BLM antifa type of KKK group that goes and does the violence. And these brown shirts are nicknamed Stormtroopers Sturm Abteilung, which means stormtrooper. And they would storm into the meetings of Hitler's opponents and shout down the speakers and disrupt the meeting. And then they would lock arms and block access to buildings. You can even see pictures of them. And then could you imagine people locking arms and blocking things? And. And then they went into the cities and they smashed the windows and looted and set on fire over 7,000 Jewish stores in the downtown cities in Kristallnacht, the night of Broken Glass. And in this confusion the people panic, right? So you have a republic without morals and virtue ends in this panic, this chaos. And they want someone to come along. And Hitler usurps power, declares himself the Fuhrer. And then what happened is their government transitions from a republic to a dictatorship. So this idea that you have your group go in there and create the crises. So in times of crises, people automatically give up their freedoms. And this model is, let's speed it along by intentionally creating crisis. And then it comes a little bit closer to home. After World War II you have Germany, France, England give independence to their former colonies and they start brand new countries with brand new leaders and they're climbing out of the post war crisis and it's a promising world. Except the Soviet Union decides it doesn't just want communism to run itself, it wants it to run the world. And so they began to send KGB agents into these brand new emerging countries and they would identify groups with grievances, ethnically, maybe Croats and Bosnians. Yeah, religiously with Sunni, Shia, Orthodox or racially or economically, doesn't matter. They would break them into groups of victims and oppressors, haves and have nots. And then they would stage protests that they would escalate into riots and violence. And then they would co opt the media with bribes and threats to blame the new leader of the new country for all all the problems. And then they would cultivate weak links in the military. And when the country got panicky enough, they would do a coup or a rigged election and replace the leader with a Soviet puppet. And then the violence would stop for a while until the dust settles and they realized they just gave up their bottom up form of government republic. And now they're ruled Top down by a Soviet dictator. And they would even co opt the media and have it release false polling data prior to a rigged election showing the popular leader as unpopular. So when they would do the coup, nobody would question it.

[Charlie Kirk]

Geez. What are some examples of that?

[Bill Federer]

Well, Lithuania and Poland and Hungary and Bulgaria and Romania and Syria and, and so 45 countries fell to communism this way. Now Truman does nothing. He thinks the United nations that he helped form will bring world peace. But the next president's Eisenhower and he's faced with a question. Do nothing and let the communists take over or fight fire with fire. And so Iran sides with the Soviet Union and nationalizes their oil. And you think oh big deal, wait a second, Britain has no oil. There's no oil fields in Britain. And so in 1908 they formed the Anglo Iranian Oil Company. You got Sir Large of Arabia, right. The British are over there in the Middle east and you know the Anglo Iranian Oil Company better by the name BP or British Petroleum. British Petroleum is the Anglo Iranian Oil Company. And so when Mazadik, the leader of Iran sides with the Soviet Union in 1953 and nationalizes the oil industry, Britain's out of oil. So they appealed to Eisenhower who approved the first CIA operation to over overthrow a country's leader. It's Operation Ajax. And they went over and sent Kermit Roosevelt Jr. The grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, he's an expert in foreign languages. He's the CIA operative that goes to Tehran and he recruits mobsters and gangsters and radical imams. And he stages protests and riots that begin to attack mosques and co ops the media with bribes and threats and cultivate weeks links in the military. And when the country got panicky enough, they, they marched in, put Masdek under house arrest, locked him away for the rest of his life, where he died. And they installed the Shah. And the Shah loved America because we helped put him in. And the CIA did the same thing in Guatemala 1954, the Congo 1960, Dominican Republic in Chile 1973. And the KGB did the same thing with Brezhnev helping Yasser Arafat to start the PLO in Brazil, Regnev hugging Castro and helping him take over Cuba. And Mugabe, Mugabe in the farc and you know, Colombia and Venezuela and Latin South America. They had over 100 different coups and coup attempts in African countries. And then the Chinese doing the same thing in the Far East. This is called the Cold War. And the only difference this time around is these tactics seem to be taking place on our own soil. That under the previous president, not just was the IRS co opted and used for political purposes with Lois Lerner being in the president's office 147 times. And then she turned it into this agency to go after conservative groups. It wasn't just the using of the LGBT agenda to drive traditional valued people out of the military and co opting it. It wasn't just co opting the doj. With Eric Holder doing Fast and Furious, giving guns to drug gangs in Mexico, we began to see that there are people in these government agencies that do not like President Trump and they've been working for four years to try to get rid of him with a false Russian narrative and a false Ukrainian extortion narrative. And, and it, it just seems like they've just stepped it up one notch higher and used this. You don't have pallets of bricks being dropped off right? Where they're going to have a. I spoke in Emporia, Kansas, I mean, and they said, gee, they were going to have a peaceful protest and someone dropped off a pallet of bricks, right? And there was no construction going on in that area. Somebody just happened to drop. This was a tremendous amount of coordination that happened all across the country. And you know, I'm from St. Louis, which is 30 miles from Ferguson. I actually spoke in Ferguson quite a number of times. And it's the First Baptist Church in FERGUSON. And, and 99% of the people riding in Ferguson were not from Ferguson. They were, they were brought in by more M O r E Missourians organizing for reform and empowerment. And you can Google it. Moore got $33 million from George Soros and they had their trainings in inner city churches and they trained them how to, you know, lock arms and block highway, you know, 44. And they would train them how to give emotional tear filled addresses when someone shoves a camera in their face, you know, well, we were just standing in the middle of the highway and this car rammed into us. And anyway, after the rioting they were promised $5,000 a person for trashing Ferguson and they weren't paid right away. So they took over the Moore headquarter office and they started a hashtag cut the check campaign and it began to get legs. Even the city council in St. Louis condemned them for doing this and everything. And then before the story went national, they hurried up and cut the check and paid them off. But it was a rent them off and they moved the same people and you know, oh, Charlotte, North Carolina and Milwaukee and you know, these different things. But here you have this model that we've seen being used all the way back to the Brown Shirts and all the way back to, you know, the KGB and so forth, these tactics under the previous administration have been seem to have been co opted by the deep state against the current president.

[Charlie Kirk]

And so what piece of history do you think could be most instructive for us how to solve this and remedy this?

[Bill Federer]

Exposure is one of the first things. You know that the first thing is to shine light on the problem and all the cockroaches run away. That truth is the antidote to the lies. And so that's the first thing I, I think is important. The second thing is realizing that it's the people that are the king. A republic is where the people are king ruling through representatives. So we pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic. We're basically pledging allegiance to us being in charge of ourselves. And so when somebody protests the flag, what they're saying is, I don't want to be the king anymore. I protest this system where I participate in ruling myself. It's like, really. Right. We have to remind ourselves that we are in charge and the politicians are our servants. We hire them, we fire them, we vote them in, we vote them out that they need to obey us. And when you look up the word usurping, usurping is where somebody does something they're not authorized to do and people let them get away with it. And if you let them get away with it for long, that becomes the new goalpost. It's like sandlot football. Oh, you're out of bounds. No, no, no, the boundary's over here, right? Well, you all played that, you know, and then. Okay, okay, that's the new boundary. Then the next time. No, no, no, the boundary's over here. They keep moving, and that's called usurpation. And it only happens when people are apathetic and they don't get involved.

[Charlie Kirk]

Like, I completely agree with all of that. And so how can people learn more about your American Minute? And by the way, Bill, you're going to be coming up on our program many times, but how can people subscribe to American Minute and get behind what you're doing?

[Bill Federer]

Well, thank you, Charlie. First of all, it's real honored to be on with you. And you're brilliant and you're articulate, and

[Charlie Kirk]

I'm trying to learn. That's all I'll admit to.

[Bill Federer]

I'm 63 now, and I can tell that I. When I listen to you talk, especially an interview with you and Ben Shapiro, it's like, man, it's like lightning fast, shooting back and forth like, man, how can you think so fast? So, so it's a real honor to be on my website's americanminute.com and I send out little history things to try to bring focus. One of my favorite quotes is from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. And he was a Pulitzer Prize winning historian on John F. Kennedy staff. And the quote is, history is to the nation what memory is to the individual. So if you can imagine an individual who has lost their memory, maybe they have Alzheimer's, it's an older person, and they forgot who they are. They forgot who you are. It's really sad. Anybody can take anything away from them. We sort of have national Alzheimer's here. We are the freest country that planet Earth has ever seen with more individual opportunity and choices. And we forgot how we got here. We forgot who we are. And we're blindly staring off into space while some, you know, nursing home person just begins to take all of our freedoms out of our hands. And, and so sometimes when we tell these stories and, and you are great at it, it's like that little flicker comes back into people's eyes, like, oh, that's who I am. That's who you are. That. That's what America is all about.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah, that's well said. Well, Bill, thank you for your commitment to our country and for explaining this history for us. And we're gonna have to have you back on very soon, so.

[Bill Federer]

Well, it's an honor to be on. And people say history repeats itself. Really just human nature repeats itself and history is the record of that. So we study human nature and you can pretty well just. All technology does is magnify. You get a good person like yourself, they'll use it for good. You get a person that is not good, they'll use all this fancy technology for something wrong. So technology just magnifies what's in the human heart and history is the record of that.

[Charlie Kirk]

So Amen, Bill. God bless you. Americanminute.com speak to you soon.

[Bill Federer]

Thank you.

[Charlie Kirk Show Announcer/Host]

Thanks so much for listening, everybody. If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com email us your questions. Freedomarlie Kirk. If you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com support thanks so much for listening, everybody. God bless.

[Charlie Kirk]

Speak to you soon.