← The Charlie Kirk Show
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- [00:00]
Charlie Kirk
Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production now available on Apple Podcasts,
- [00:04]
Benny Johnson
Podcast 1, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
- [00:10]
Charlie Kirk
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
- [00:12]
Benny Johnson
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. 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. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed destroyed countries, destroyed lives. And we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. I am here with Benny Johnson, Meme Lord himself, turning point USA. Benny, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
- [00:49]
Charlie Kirk
Thank you, Charlie. It's an honor.
- [00:52]
Benny Johnson
What do you make of what's happening right now in our country?
- [00:56]
Charlie Kirk
I think we've reached. I think we've reached on. I think we've reached on a number. Number of levels. Just. Just abject, abject exhaustion. I think people are tired. I think people are tired. I think people are finally starting to say, like, I'm. I'm. I'm tired. I'm tired of the virtue signaling. I'm tired of the outrage. I'm tired of the pandering and I'm ti. I'm tired. I'm exhausted with the. I'm exhausted from being just exhausted. I think a lot of that comes from coronavirus.
- [01:28]
Benny Johnson
The lockdowns. Not the virus.
- [01:30]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, the lockdowns.
- [01:32]
Benny Johnson
Because we didn't have to lock down.
- [01:33]
Charlie Kirk
I think a lot of it comes from lockdowns. Yeah, I think they're. I think they're. That created. I think that created the kindling for this moment. I think it created, like a moment where you would just light the match, something needed to light the match, and then it would all. It would all go up.
- [01:45]
Benny Johnson
Well, yeah, and so you make a good point. You take people's sports away. You take their religious services away. You take their mental health counseling away. You take any capacity to socialize with your friends. You take away your capacity to go for walks or runs outside.
- [01:58]
Charlie Kirk
These keep people normal.
- [02:01]
Benny Johnson
You take away walks on the beach, literally. You take away boating.
- [02:04]
Charlie Kirk
Yes.
- [02:05]
Benny Johnson
Especially for young men living in urban centers full of testosterone.
- [02:10]
Charlie Kirk
Yes.
- [02:10]
Benny Johnson
All of a sudden, they start burning down the country. We shouldn't say, oh, I wonder what's gotten into them lately. Now, I'm not solely blaming the lockdowns for it, but it was a contributing factor, no doubt.
- [02:19]
Charlie Kirk
Absolutely. You talk with any mental health professional and you talk about people falling off the wagon when it comes to alcoholism or some other vice. This happens when they lose their touchstones, when they lose the things in their life that they can count on for normalcy. And so church, religion, faith, family, friends, meeting up people at bar, meeting up people on the golf course, going to the event and cheering for the Bulls, cheering for the Cubbies. That those are things that actually, it's amazing because it seems so superfluous, but that is the glue that binds a society together.
- [02:52]
Benny Johnson
But the central planners intentionally took that away from us.
- [02:57]
Charlie Kirk
When else has this happened in American history? I mean, it really is an unprecedented moment.
- [03:03]
Benny Johnson
I said this on an earlier episode of the podcast. You guys can email us your questions freedomarliekirk.com where typically when we make a bad decision as a country, there's a precedent. Tax hikes, lowering taxes, monetary policy, invading a country. We have a precedent. There's no playbook here. There's no precedent. You have an American city that is abolishing and dismantling their police force.
- [03:28]
Charlie Kirk
Yes, correct. But that was the goal. That was the point of who? Well, the communists. I mean, this is how communism starts in a society. How is that the way that communism starts in a society? And I'm not basing this off of Benny Johnson's intellect. I have a very room temperature iq. I'm basing this off the writings of Karl Marx, who I familiarize myself with just today in writing a new script about this topic. Karl Marx, in writing the Communist Manifesto, lays out very, very easily the playbook for, for bringing capitalism to socialism as a throughput to communism. And the playbook is this. Create identitarian groups, make those groups fight, create hatred between those groups, make sure that one group kills the other. And then you can destroy all classes, you can destroy all capital. What was the goal of complete control? The goal of Marx was to make sure that there was no further private property. He said bluntly, the goal of communism is the elimination of private property. To get to that end, you had to steal from the bourgeois. The proletariat has to rise up against the bourgeois. It's a fancy way of saying bourgeoisie,
- [04:54]
Benny Johnson
but yeah, it depends how you pronounce it.
- [04:55]
Charlie Kirk
Fancy way of saying. It's a fancy way of saying,
- [04:59]
Benny Johnson
you
- [04:59]
Charlie Kirk
know, like the business owners and the workers. So the people who work at Starbucks is riding up against the franchise owner to kill him. I mean, really, that's, that's the point. And I think that's really misunderstood about Marx is he wanted violence. He asked for forcible. Forcible violence and revolution. They wanted to raise the classes to the ground. To ruin them.
- [05:27]
Benny Johnson
Yes, to torch.
- [05:28]
Charlie Kirk
To torch them. To burn your and your cities and your businesses to the ground. The goal was to smash the windows, burn private property, eliminate that entirely and start new. And when you listen to the Ilhan Omars of the world talk about their new reimagining of a world without police, it's Marxism, it's absolute textbook.
- [05:50]
Benny Johnson
It's Thomas More utopianism too. Utopia actually means nowhere. If you go back to the actual words of what it means when they say the abolition of private property, it's just not the ability to own a home, it's the abolition of you.
- [06:02]
Charlie Kirk
Correct.
- [06:03]
Benny Johnson
Because John Locke identified correctly. Private property is your ability to consciousness. It's your dream, it's your imagination. It's if I draw something on a piece of paper, I'm going to be able to either monetize it, keep it, shred it up. Everything you are, your existence is embodied in individual sovereignty.
- [06:20]
Charlie Kirk
Correct.
- [06:21]
Benny Johnson
It's private property.
- [06:22]
Charlie Kirk
This is why you see a religion forming right now on the left.
- [06:24]
Benny Johnson
What's the religion?
- [06:26]
Charlie Kirk
Identity is called the, the church of identitarian. And it has everything to do with putting people into groups by their identity.
- [06:33]
Benny Johnson
Well, and this is postmodern and postmodernist
- [06:35]
Charlie Kirk
basic thinking and broken down, I mean if you can create, there's. The easiest way to destroy a country is to make sure that the tribes within the country kill each other. And then you've seen, I mean, you've seen this in places like Rwanda for instance, and places like Nazi Germany where you, you tribalize people and then one group of people steals everything from the other and enforces their will upon them and there's no one to stop them. Most importantly, there's no church. I think there's another thing that is roundly misunderstood about Marx. He just flatly says there is no church. The state is the church. The point is for the state to become so powerful. This is the exact word, it supersedes the church. And so when you watch, it makes your skin crawl as a Christian. When you watch the government close our church doors and say we are more
- [07:31]
Benny Johnson
powerful than you and Christians do very little to rise up against it.
- [07:34]
Charlie Kirk
Correct. In fact, we put our heads down and say, yes sir. And then when you watch churches be lit on fire, now I'm not talking about the famous church that was lit on fire across in the White House in Mississippi the church that refuses to close for coronavirus was torched to the ground, burned to the ground, got very little attention. They're burning churches. This is precisely what the communists did. This is exactly the goal of Marxism, to make the state more powerful than the church.
- [08:00]
Benny Johnson
Yes, and we know that the left is going to try to replace God with government. We know that. We've seen it time and time again. But what is remarkable is how those of us that believe in God, how few of us are fighting, take a second to think about the private information you have on your computer and mobile devices. Your pictures, videos, financial information, work files, personal documents. Information that cyber criminals are constantly trying to get their hands on. What are you doing to keep that from happening? You need protection. And Pcmatic is doing it right. Instead of only blocking programs on a blacklist of known cyber threats like traditional antivirus software, Pcmatic protects your Internet connected devices by blocking any application that isn't on its white list of known trusted programs. And they're the only antivirus company that does its development, research and customer support 100% in the United States. Made in America for Americans. 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How convenient they adjust it when people start using their data. Let's say it's 15. 15 out of a country are 330 million people. So these woke Christians tell the entire world how good of people they are. And I scroll through their Instagram feed. Benny. I scrolled back to Sanctity Life Sunday. No post about abortion. None. Zero. Nothing. In fact, some would go as far to say, well, we're praying for all issues on the side of abortion. They don't Want to offend people when literally a million babies in America are aborted every single year. One million. So now if these woke Christian pastors, woke Christianity really cared about black lives, wouldn't they care about the 400,000 black babies that are aborted every single year? So you have a million abortions every single year. And about 13 to 15% of the population are African Americans. Take that in half because only half of that are women that are able to have children. Half of that is about childbearing age. So 4% of the American population accounts for 43% of all the abortions. Do you know in New York City if you see a black woman who's pregnant on a subway, she's more likely going to the abortion clinic than she's going to the delivery room. The abortion rate is higher than the birth rate in New York City. But the woke Christians, Benny, they tell you we need to stand up for social justice. We need to stand up for the fight for the least of these in society. Yet they remain silent on black, on black crime. They remain silent when black fathers have left the home. Do you know that 77% of black children in America will not grow up with a father in the home? That's according to the Washington Examiner, 77%. Then we send them the failing public schools where there was an independent study in Baltimore, 13 public schools. They could not find a kid that could do math or read at grade level. So we send them to democrat run cartel schools run by the teacher unions. They don't have fathers to come home to. And then these woke Christian pastors that mostly pandered by the way to sanctimonious social media activist suburbanites that have a messianic complex that they can come in and fix the world because they posted a black square on their Instagram where they don't say a word about the slaughter of the unborn in our abortion clinics. They don't mention a syllable about the decimation of black fathers. And yet they stand in their pulpits and they condemn people like me because I dare use data and statistics talking about how no actually the police are generally a force for good in America. Do you know that in New York City in 1994, right when around Mayor Giuliani became mayor, there was about 2,200 murders a year in New York City. That's almost a 9, 11 in New York City. Every single year Mayor Giuliani says, guess what, we're going to put the police back in the streets. We're going to get tough on Crime. We're going to use data to find out where the gang bangers are hiding out and we are going to arrest them and we are going to be tough. Murders went down to 324 a year and they went down as low as 200 a year under the early years of Mayor Bloomberg. Do you know who most of those lives were saved? 2,000 to 300. Just about those 2,100 people. No, I'm sorry, the 2100 people. Black people. Black people. Hundreds of thousands of black lives have been saved by police officers over the last couple decades. Hundreds of thousands. Yet these woke Christians with their black squares are saying law enforcement are killing people in the streets. If you take the multiplier effect of the hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic individuals that have lives have been saved because of more policing in America and you take the multiplier effect over a couple generations and the children that they have, you're talking about probably a million people of color that are alive over a 30 year window because of law enforcement. And the Christian pastors do nothing to stand up for it. In fact they kowtow and they capitulate to something that is rooted in, in a lie. I wish they were 1 10th as vocal for truth as they are cowardly advancing lies and deception in America.
- [13:53]
Charlie Kirk
When did Christians become cowards?
- [13:57]
Benny Johnson
Well, they've always been cowards because we're human beings. See, courage is the hardest to find of the greatest virtues. So courage takes honesty. So you can be honest, but you can have no courage. But you cannot be courageous. Honest being honest. See, and I truly believe you can't actually be fully honest and fully in the pursuit of truth without being courageous. You can be half truth, you can be half honest. But Christians have been cowardly for years, Benny. This is nothing new. You know, it's really interesting. I always wonder to myself how was it possible? When I was in eighth grade, my teacher showed us slides of Benito Mussolini and the death camps throughout Italy. And I remember raising my hands, I say, I don't get it. Her name was Mrs. Smith. I'll never forget the classroom. I said, I don't understand. Italy's where the Vatican is, where all these Christians are. How is this possible? I'll never forget what she said. She said, no, they helped. Talking about they helped. And I to this up until recently, Benny, I didn't get it. I struggled with it. I said, come on, the church, they're moral people. They're about action. Now. I am not equating what's happening today to what Benito Mussolini did. But we're on that way, Benny. We are on the way of collectivized anarcho tyranny where we have despotic rule, where people that pay penance to the group humiliation religion will be saved. I never understood up until now how that's possible, because far too often Christians, and Christian leaders in particular, Benny, they're far too happy and content to be complicit and to be compliant and to be agreeable, not disagreeable. The church is built to be a disagreeable entity. You know, these pastors, they say, well, I don't want to offend anybody. Then why did you become a pastor? I mean, isn't the whole idea of telling people, these are the same pastors, by the way, that will go up and say, you're going to hell if you don't believe this? Like, that's a pretty absolute truth, Right? They're happy saying that. But as far as saying, oh, abortion is not good for society and not moral, I don't know, man. That's a tough sell for me, you know, isn't the eternal damnation thing probably a harder sell? So to complete the point, Christians have now become cowards. There are some amazing ones. Rob McCoy, Jack Hibbs, Jerry Falwell Jr. Falkirk center for Faith and Liberty at Liberty University are phenomenal. But you are seeing if the west falls. The one institution that could have stopped it was the American church. And the weak pastors that care more about their social media following, that care more about their Facebook livestream, It's because of them. And they'll be judged because of.
- [16:51]
Charlie Kirk
Seems peculiar because if you look at the early church, while it's not as though Christ, Christian, little Christ, right? So should model yourself after Christ, if you're going to call yourself a Christian, you should at least try. If you go back and look through his life, it's not as though he was actively attempting to run for politics or get overtly political. He was perfectly happy to own you, like wreck your world if you come at him. And you are a member of the political class, a Pharisee, which is seen as a pseudo religious, like a religious leader, but also a politician. They were politicians. Like, he would wreck you if you were part of that and you were coming at him, and you were coming at him using God or using your position in the church, but then advocating
- [17:48]
Benny Johnson
for
- [17:50]
Charlie Kirk
something that's antithetical to God's teaching.
- [17:52]
Benny Johnson
That's right. Well, and Christ went after the Sadducees and the Pharisees and in the early Church. It's really interesting you mentioned this. The early, early church we're talking about right after Christ died. After Christ dies and rises again, right? So you got the most fired up group of Christians you could imagine, right? These guys are ready to take on the world. And even James, Jesus, brother James, the just is like, let's do this thing. Like, let's tell the world, right? You got Matthew, you got Luke that wants to go do this whole testimony thing. And what do they do in early Acts Church? They hide the first thing they do because God says, sit and wait. And they do. And so then Stephen has this great idea, right? He's like, I'm gonna go give a sermon about how great Jesus is. So Stephen stands up, gives the first sermon in recorded Christianity, gets stoned to death. Do you know who oversaw that stoning? Paul. So Stephen comes up, he's like, jesus is Lord. If you read it, I think it's like Acts 8. I could. I could have the. It's right around there. He's like, jesus is Lord. He's risen again. Let us Jews follow it. He's like, who's with me? Kill him.
- [19:02]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
- [19:03]
Benny Johnson
And so then the church goes through this crisis moment, right, where you start to see how much courage is there really within the early Christian church. And so what happens is then early Christians scatter, right from the far East. There's rumors that think either Andrew, I could have it wrong, Go as far east as India. Paul goes right to the Mediterranean, the heart of civilization. There's a reason why Paul went there, right? There's a reason why Paul went straight to Greece and Italy. Because Paul's like, if we are going to get this Christianity thing to get set on fire, I got to convince the people of Corinth, I got to convince the people of Greece, I got to convince the people of Italy. Ends up in a prison. Like, really quickly, Paul gives this amazing, unbelievable sermon, if you will. Literally in the shadows of the Acropolis. Acropolis? Acropolis on the hill in Athens. I've been there. Where all their Greek gods are there. He's like, you got it all wrong, guys. One God sent his son, died for us. Of course, they throw him in prison shortly after. But it's interesting because the persecutions of Christians went up, and Christianity almost operated as this kind of subterranean religion for a couple hundred years, where it was almost in the crypts. It was this, oh, my gosh, we can't get our heads up. When there were the five great Roman emperors ending in Marcus Aurelius. Almost every Single one of them participated in the persecution of Christians. Marcus Aurelius was more balanced. He's like, come on, these guys aren't that bad. And it wasn't until the creation of the Eastern Roman Empire, wasn't until King Constantine came to this unbelievable revelation that Christ is king to Christianity, to go from a subterranean religion to a dominant religion. Now, they were courageous. I'm not saying they were cowardly because they were in the crypts. There are unbelievable stories about early Christianity, right? But do you know what happened, Benny? As soon as it became the self endorsed religion of the Eastern Roman Empire and they tore down the temple of Venus in Jerusalem and they built up the church, the Holy Sepulcher, which still is to this day in the old city of Jerusalem. After about 100 years, 200 years, Christians got more worried about protecting their political status than actually advancing the kingdom. The boldness of the early church disappeared. And isn't that kind of what you're seeing today?
- [21:15]
Charlie Kirk
Yes, you're seeing this today, particularly in something that I find just so fundamentally hateful about the very basics of Christianity. And I just find this so. I find this so offensive. There are things in Christianity where, there are places in Christianity, at least in the way that I look at it, again, stating once again for the record, very, very room temperature IQ individual right here talking. I'm no philosopher and I'm no scholar, certainly not a historian, but I know things that God reserves for himself and things that God keeps.
- [21:57]
Benny Johnson
Yes.
- [21:57]
Charlie Kirk
That I am not allowed to touch. Right. And I shouldn't go there, right. Telling people who's gonna go to heaven and hell. That's one God determines, right. These things. And it's not really up for me. I don't want that weight on my shoulder.
- [22:10]
Benny Johnson
And you know, your own personal. So that's why you'll never.
- [22:12]
Charlie Kirk
On the street corner with a sign, right, you're going to hell. You'll never find that that is a thing that God reserves. Something that God reserves from the earliest stories, the earliest, earliest stories, the earliest story is creation. And so when God makes. When God creates the world, when God creates human beings, animals, he gives them their shape, their form. And when he creates Adam, when he creates Eve, he. He creates them in his own image, immutably. And so when you have a movement in America right now that is saying that because of your skin color, you've sinned, you've committed a wrong based on the way God made you. Well, how God made you was wrong. What God gave you, how God put you together was incorrect. We're smarter than God. The way God made this type of person is incorrect. I can't think of a thing that's more offensive on level than to look a creator in the face if you do believe in God, than to look him in the face and say, you messed this all up.
- [23:31]
Benny Johnson
You're 100% right.
- [23:32]
Charlie Kirk
We're going to go after these people because of how you made them.
- [23:35]
Benny Johnson
And so there's a. There's a very important Old Testament story that archetypically reinforces this. And you have to understand God reserves certain things for himself. Totality and fullness of knowledge and fullness of sovereignty. And so you saw in the earliest teachings of Genesis, human beings push the boundaries, totally disobey. God sends a flood not soon. Far after, in Genesis 11, human beings say, you know, let's try to create a tower that goes all the way to the heavens. Let's create a totality ourself, a monopoly, monopoly on knowledge, a monopoly on power. So archetypically what that means is that we are going to become God. That's what the Tower of Babel means. We're going to, it's going to be so beautiful, it'll be the greatest thing ever. We'll touch the heavens. We're going to be all knowing and all powerful. How did God react to that? He said, I will respond to this with chaos and confusion because that's reserved for me. I'm the one that gets to choose how this place is designed, how it operates. And you are in total depravity of sin as a human being. So he scatters people all throughout the nations. See, people look at the Tower of Babel story wrong archetypically. They say, oh well, it's God saying that, you know, we have to try to learn to communicate with each other. That's nonsense. That's not the correct interpretation. Instead it's where in the world is anyone trying to create a totally autonomous structure to try to supersede God? Ask yourself that question, where are a group of people trying to create a structure? We know in the 20th century that was the Soviet Union.
- [25:17]
Charlie Kirk
Correct.
- [25:17]
Benny Johnson
We know in the 20th century that was Mussolini's Italy. We even know in the early 20th century, Rockefeller tried to do it in a business way. I'm gonna monopolize everything. God will crush you and scatter you and you will go back to chaos and confusion. So what you have now is social planning Utopia. Utopian driven people that are trying to create their own fullness and totality of the planet. And so they don't like the way God made people that are white. The left doesn't, because they don't like God. In fact, they don't believe in God. And for them, God is dead. They fulfilled Nietzsche. I mean, Nietzsche accurately predicted the entire 20th century. He accurately predicted this idea of group guilt is going to end. Awful. He basically said the 20th century is going to be a bloodbath. And he was right. It was the bloodiest, deadliest century ever in recorded history. Why? Well, it wasn't because of private property. It was actually because of people trying to get rid of private property. Mao, 55 million people killed, dead, murdered. Stalin, probably 60 million. Hitler, anywhere between 15 to 20 million. Mussolini, who knows. Pol Pot, who knows. Put all together, 100 million people dead through collectivist experiments. Do you know what they were trying to do? They're trying to get a return back to autocratic feudalism. Do you know how it worked in the 14th century? Which is how they want it to work now. Your father did a horrible thing. You're banished for five generations. That's what they're saying to us now. They're saying to us, oh, you have a certain skin color. People of your skin color were awful to people of a different skin color in the 1860s. Therefore, you're banished. This is against the Christian ethic, which is you're made in the image of God. You're uniquely created. You're your own individual with your own thoughts, your own feelings, own characteristics. On spirituality, you can have salvation even if your father is a piece of garbage, even if your aunt is like the worst person ever. Your bloodline does not dictate your destiny. That's a Christian ethic. You know how we know this? In the conversion of Paul. The conversion of Paul is like the greatest story we have in the Bible where your past does not have to be your destiny. That Paul, a Roman Jew who was literally a Gestapo enforcer who oversaw the execution of Stephen, was like, how about you throw a couple more stones on him? I don't know if he's hurting enough. Was literally Paul's job, encounters Jesus Christ, total conversion, and goes on a ministry that changes Christianity forever and writes basically entire New Testament. His bloodline was not his destiny. He became something totally new. We as Christians believe in the forgiveness and the liberation from your sin. The left doesn't believe that. And by the way, the Bible tells us that Satan will remind you of your sin regularly and routinely, whereas Christ will liberate you from your sin. Where you are a new person. You're born anew. So the Christian ethic that built Western civilization that wasn't even fully fulfilled because we had to fight a war over it and we had to amendments. But the idea, the preamble, the Constitution never changed. Isn't that so cool that the foundation was laid but it wasn't fulfilled until later and now we're trying to digress back into those tribal things that tribal devolution. This is so anti western and so dangerous. And they admit it, Benny Everything that we know to be true. They want to destroy everything that if you look at a person like Ben Carson, they say, oh, he's not really black. That's what they say. They believe it. This year has been a total doozy. Impeachment, coronavirus, race riots. Who knows what's next? What better time to get right to the source? Senator Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles got back together in D.C. this week for the first time in months. Their podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz topped the podcast charts earlier this year with their inside look into the impeachment hearings. And now they're back at it again as 2020 gets even crazier. This is your chance to go behind the scenes in Washington to see what's really happening. You can't get much closer to the action than this. Go check out the podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz and be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Again, that's Verdict with Ted Cruz. Check it out and subscribe today.
- [29:41]
Charlie Kirk
Don't ever confess to a sin for which you are not guilty.
- [29:48]
Benny Johnson
Don't anyone else except don't ever judge.
- [29:51]
Charlie Kirk
Don't ever judge an entire group of people based on the actions of one individual in that group. Don't ever take someone's skin color and prejudge them based on the way God made them. And don't ever kneel to anyone other than God.
- [30:09]
Benny Johnson
Well, and let's let's play this out. I want a leftist to tell me that you know how this conversation will go. Well, say, let's pretend you were right. Let's pretend that we should embrace blood guilt or collective guilt. Do you know anything about my bloodline? The Kirks fought in the Civil War for the Union. We fought to free the slaves. My bloodline on my father's side from Austin, Minnesota, were community organizers for the Republican Party in the 1920s to ensure the women's right to vote and to allow black representation to increase. How about the 1960s? My party, my family in Chicago, in defiance to Richard Daly and John Fitzgerald Kennedy's wishes, were organizing against the union to try to pass the Civil Rights Act. So if you're to judge me by my bloodline, despite what my family has done, I gotta prove myself. So you can't hold it against me. Nor can you be held up based on the sins or the merits or the moral work of who people preceded you. Because you're your own individual. You're not connected to whomever is before you. You have your own characteristics, uniquely formed and shaped by our Creator. The left doesn't believe that the way tribalism worked is you're part of this specific character, this specific unit. Can't break out of it. Sorry, you're done. Do you know, do you know why the Left wants tribalism? Two reasons. One, some of them actually believe that it will be better than what they consider to be a tyrannical Western experiment. That is so nonsensical and it's ludicrous, it's pathological and honestly schizophrenic. It really is. But the second group, ho, ho, ho, they want tribalism because tribes are the easiest to control. In fact, if you wanted total and complete control, if you wanted to make yourself God, if you wanted to make yourself an altar, if you wanted to be a demigod, you wouldn't want a bunch of free thinking individuals that own property. Are you kidding me? That's like the hardest group of people to control. Like, no, sorry, I got my own family, I go to church. You're fine, but you're not the most important thing in my life. And these atheist leftists are like, no, like this is, I'm important. That's why they want to destroy the church, that's why they want to destroy private property. Because all of a sudden all that stuff gets stripped away. That autocrat becomes really, really important. It's malevolent because they don't believe in an afterlife, they don't believe in a creator. The only thing they have is right here and right now. And all that matters is that 75 to 80 year window that they can maximize their pleasure and exploit all of us. That's what they want. And now some of them say, well, we're going to make the world a better place, we're going to improve everything. So let me get this straight. Your confined intellectual capacity and your philosopher king type roundtable is going to save us from what exactly? We need to be saved from you, if you think that way, because we have countless experiments in the 20th century of people like you that quickly turns into 100 million people dead as a bloodbath.
- [33:18]
Charlie Kirk
It Became crystal clear to me, resident of D.C. much to your hatred, the Kingdom of D.C. the Kingdom of D.C. became evidently clear that this is a abjectly bankrupt movement that has nothing at its heart other than vile hatred of America and Marxism.
- [33:43]
Benny Johnson
When love of Marxism.
- [33:44]
Charlie Kirk
But yeah, when I woke up in the morning and found a group that call themselves anti fascists. Call themselves antifa on face. Call themselves anti fascists. A Marxian term, by the way, made up Marxian term for political and press reasons. This group was vandalizing and desecrating the World War II memorial.
- [34:09]
Benny Johnson
Now why would they do that?
- [34:10]
Charlie Kirk
If you are anti fascist, then I think we can at the very least agree that the worst fascist regime was Hitler's Nazi Germany, Third Reich. And the most effective murder machine in
- [34:26]
Benny Johnson
unspeakable evil last hundred years was unspeakable evil.
- [34:29]
Charlie Kirk
Was that. And so just desecrating the memorial to the men and women who fought true fascism in its most vile form. There's absolute. There's absolutely no. No sense in it and nothing but moral bankruptcy. Then you look down the mall and you see the Lincoln Memorial also desecrated, defaced by this movement. This movement calls themselves anti racists, yet they are desecrating the Lincoln Memorial. Obviously, we're all. We're Americans. We're aware of what Abraham Lincoln did, what the Union army did, what your family did. Fighting for the Lincoln Army, Fighting for the Union Army. And so if you're going to desecrate the memorial to the generation that fought fascism in its worst form in the last hundred years, and the memorial to the man who. Who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, who is a Republican, and you're gonna call yourself. You're gonna call yourself a anti fascist,
- [35:38]
Benny Johnson
but they actually don't.
- [35:39]
Charlie Kirk
Anti racist.
- [35:41]
Benny Johnson
And so what you're saying is hyperlogical. And they see all of those as constructs though of a society that must be destroyed. Now they use the terminology antifa because you have people like Joy Reid that end up defending them. Like, well, who could possibly be against fascists? As if the label is the totality. The totality of their activity.
- [36:01]
Charlie Kirk
Oh, Charlie, are. Are you aware that you and I are both against the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea? Yeah, Democratic.
- [36:09]
Benny Johnson
How could we be against that?
- [36:10]
Charlie Kirk
And their people and their republic?
- [36:11]
Benny Johnson
How could we be against the Chinese Communist Party? They just want to help people live more communally.
- [36:17]
Charlie Kirk
Yes, it's the People's Party.
- [36:19]
Benny Johnson
That's right.
- [36:19]
Charlie Kirk
How can you be against people?
- [36:21]
Benny Johnson
This is something that I use the branding intentionally.
- [36:25]
Charlie Kirk
This is something that I don't understand. If you're going to talk about branding, you and I do a lot of branding all day long and you're wearing
- [36:30]
Benny Johnson
a taxationist theft shirt.
- [36:31]
Charlie Kirk
That's very good.
- [36:32]
Benny Johnson
You can buy it@tpusa.com hello.
- [36:35]
Charlie Kirk
Why hasn't the Republican Party branded itself as the party of freedom, the party of equality? Can you talk me through, Talk me through the history, the proud history that conservatives and Republicans should all own and be excited about and tell me once and for all, like why? Why are these leftist lies being told about the history of our party and our movement as Republicans?
- [37:05]
Benny Johnson
The party's never switched. The Republican Party was founded as an anti slavery party and ripened Wisconsin. It was advocated for people like Thaddeus Stevens and eventually embraced by slave abolitionist Abraham Lincoln, who never actually even saw his vision come to pass. The Republican Party has always been about the liberation and the flourishing of every individual made in the image of God. Remember, the negatives of America are universal. The positives are unique. What do I mean by that? Every country in the history of civilization had slavery. Few fought wars to end it, and even fewer were able to survive those wars and flourish past it. The Republican Party throughout its entire history passed the 13th and 14th amendment unanimously with no democrat support. None, zero, nothing. The party of the KKK is the party of Democrats. The KKK is the Democrat party. Ask yourself a question. Who's really focused on skin color right now? Like really focused on our skin color? Democrats. Who was focused on skin color in the 1860s? Democrats. How about the Civil Rights Act? Passed and advocated for Republicans in the House and the Senate. Now some people will say, well, it was signed by a Democrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson, because he had no choice. He wanted then the Democrats to switch and take this positive movement. And he saw it and he said, I'll only pass the Civil Rights act if you give me something in return. The Great Society, which ended up being the most disastrous set of policies ever in the history of black America. In fact, the liberal welfare state, some could argue, did so much damage to black America, in fact, any sort of damage that slavery did before it was multiplied because of the liberal welfare state. For example, fatherlessness. Prior to the Great Society program, fatherlessness in the black community was around 22%, 22 to 25%. Thirty years after the Great Society program went up to 70% 5%. Thomas Sowell says, this black economist, he says the liberal welfare state did more damage to black America than a hundred years of segregation did post America. That's Thomas Sowell saying It, not me. So the Republican Party has always been the party of you as an individual matter. Your skin color is indifferent to me. The Democrats have always been focused on skin color. The Democrats were the ones that said segregation today, segregation tomorrow. The Republicans were the one that called in the National Guard and called in using the 1807 Insurrection act signed that was under debate now by Tom Cotton. Guess what? Dwight D. Eisenhower used the Insurrection act to use federal troops to quell racist rebellions against white people. How about the National Rifle Association? Those of us that argue for gun ownership? The National Rifle association is the longest lasting and strongest civil rights organization in the history of the country. Do you know how they got their start arming Southern blacks against the kkk? Why do we want people to own firearms? Because we know the world is broken. We want good people to defend themselves against bad people. Why do we want individuals to be able to flourish? Because we believe every person matters. The Democrats, they believed in collectivized control and went from the plantation where they literally owned black people. They realized that their time was over with and the war was won by the union. So then the Democrats transitioned to nah, don't let them in my communities. Republicans were pushing for integration. Republicans were pushing for black senators which did get elected under the Republican Party. They'll never tell you that. Simultaneously in the early 1900s, the Republican Party pushed for women's suffrage. You can thank the Republican Party for women's right to vote. That was not the Democrat Party. That was the Republican party through the 30s and the 40s. It was Democrats who did not want blacks to even serve in the United States military. And it was Republicans that pushed for the total and full integration and desegregation of our armed forces. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower who served from president, served president from 1952 to 1960 that fought tooth and nail against bitter Southern Democrats. Now people say, well, don't you understand? The party switched then if the party switched, why is it that only one. One Democrat senator and one Democrat congressman switch parties from Democrat to Republican? You know why they switched? Because as the south became considerably less racist, it became more Republican. Wouldn't it be the other way around? Wouldn't it be that if the south got less racist, it would be more Democrat? In fact, as the south decided to betray racist roots, it embraced Republican righteousness. It didn't stay Democrat, the less racist they became. The Republican Party made a mistake though. The Republican Party in the late 80s and early 90s became a party of Greenwich, Connecticut, became a party of cocktail party schemes. Of how to best centrally plan our country that turned a blind eye to urban America because their votes are kind of irrelevant. And let Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton deal with the inner cities because they don't matter to us. Mayor Giuliani never believed that. He said, every citizen in New York matters to me. That's why he was elected as a Republican of New York City. But we as Republicans did not take black America and the crisis in black America because of the Great Society program, which is not systemic racism, by the way. It was not systemic racism for the reason why black America was suffering. Instead, it was Democrat exploitation from political advantage is what it was. It was the Democrats saying, how can we create a set of policies that will destroy their ambition, destroy their imagination, take the fathers out of the home and turn it into Democrat controlled precincts? And they accomplished their goal completely and totally. Here's where the Republican Party needs to reassume the mantle as the party of American liberation. Because it's our party, Benny, that freed the slaves, not the Democrats. It's our party that Abraham Lincoln said, I am the first Republican president. It was our party that elected Dwight D. Eisenhower who stood against bitter Southern segregationists. It was our party that tore down the Berlin Wall to free human beings. Republican Party, freedom of human beings. Democrat Party bondage of human beings. Literal bondage of human beings. And they used to own slaves. The Democrat Party thinks they own black people because they used to. Here's where the Republican Party needs to really get serious. Assume an agenda that is intellectually harmonic to why the party was founded in Wisconsin in the 1860s. School choice for black kids, restoring fathers back in the home. We are going to have strong, vibrant communities again where every human being can succeed. And we will fight the Democrat Party collective ideology at every single turn. Republican Party is the party of American liberation. I don't hear that enough for them. Instead, I hear stuff about corporate tax cuts, I hear stuff about fighting foreign wars that don't represent the interests of the middle class. If you ask any honest individual that cares about the betterment of our country, they're begging Republicans to do this, Benny. They're saying, please, will you talk about how you're going to improve working people's lives again? This is why Donald Trump was so amazing. Donald Trump said, wait a second, I'm a Republican because I actually have always thought for liberation. I always guess I was a metropolitan Democrat, but I never really believed a lot of the stuff they said. But for the plumber, the electrician, the welder, the person that lays tile for a living for black America. I'm going to communicate to you, you know, Donald Trump's the only Republican candidate since H.W. bush. And maybe in the 90s you had Bob Dole do this, maybe who actually asked the black America to vote for him. So for black America that's watching this, I'm not going to say what do you have to lose? Do you know what you have to gain to gain? You have a liberation where you can have a flourishing unlike everybody. What are the Democrats selling you? Reparations? More broken public schools? No police. Anarchy in the streets. Leaders like Ilhan Omar. Republican Party has lost an opportunity in the last 20 years. Reassume the mantle and we can build a movement that will put the Democrats in the perpetual political minority for the next hundred years. 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- [46:45]
Charlie Kirk
if you are a Republican and you are listening to this podcast or watching this on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter and what you just Heard is something that should make you proud. There is a movement out there that is attempting to shame you, make you wake up in the morning and feel ashamed of how you believe or who you voted for. You should be proud of your history as a conservative. You should be proud of your history as Republican.
- [47:14]
Benny Johnson
Yes.
- [47:14]
Charlie Kirk
And the people who should be apologizing and should feel ashamed are the people who walk into the DNC and work every day.
- [47:21]
Benny Johnson
Well, it's also an intellectual incongruency. That's exactly right.
- [47:24]
Charlie Kirk
Have Democrat behind their last name and run for office. They should feel ashamed of their party's history and they should be ashamed. And if there's anyone who should be apologizing right now, it should be the Democratic Party for the treatment of black Americans, not anyone.
- [47:38]
Benny Johnson
Now, the Republican Party, yesterday and forever, the Democrat Party's history, let's just be honest, the Democrats history of black people has been the worst track record of any governance that I've ever seen in American history. I won't say ever, that wouldn't be fair because there's obviously international examples worse than that. But in American history, you can't point to an example of a group that has been mistreated by a political party more than black America with Democrats.
- [48:04]
Charlie Kirk
It's amazing because in my neighborhood in Washington D.C. it's a majority black neighborhood. And my wife and I have lived there for five years. There's all, there's. It's working class neighborhood, but there's a wide variety of people living in our neighborhood. And here's what I hear on a daily basis, a daily basis, treat me like a human being. No one's asking for special treatment. They're asking for an opportunity in America. Nobody's asking for kneeling or reparations or to be treated like anything other than a human who's my neighbor, who is also living in America with a zip code in America, born as an American. What's also amazing is that there are multiple black immigrants in my neighborhood who have come here from various African countries. You will never find someone who is more appreciative of their opportunities in this country than someone who is a recent immigrant, especially if they come from extreme poverty. And that generally holds true. There are obviously some notable exceptions to that, but that generally holds true. And in my experience, wanting
- [49:17]
Benny Johnson
to be
- [49:17]
Charlie Kirk
simply treated equally as a human being is what my neighbors seek. And I coach their kids in football. I'm with them for their parties and in the backyard, and that's what they want. Nobody's asking for special treatment. This entire Complex. It seems like a complex. It's not reflective of the reality that I see on a daily basis in my neighborhood.
- [49:47]
Benny Johnson
You know why? Because it's designed by white liberal elites with a messianic complex to continue to keep black people down. That's why this is not a black led movement. And for the black politicians that do advance it, like Sheila Jackson Lee and Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, it's not unheard of to have leaders that actually don't try to solve the problem if the problem benefits them politically or financially. I mean, if black America started to really emerge into the upper middle class, which I know they can, and I know a set of policies can get them there and I actually advocate for them, unlike the bitter white liberal racists that run our country like Joe Biden, who's a segregationist, sympathizing Chinese agent, anti American, confused individual. I'll stop there. When you have Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, you have to ask yourself the question, if they get up into the upper middle class, does that help or hurt Al Sharpton? If all of a sudden black America's income goes up to 70, 80, $90,000 a year, do you think they're going to continue to listen to Maxine Waters or Elon Omar Alexandria, Kazu Cortez's grievance politics? Do you think they're going to take that seriously or do you think they're going to be kind of dismissive of it? Do you think they're going to be like, yeah, actually my life is pretty good. And so people then say, well, Charlie, there are systemic barriers that are preventing black America from succeeding. Fair enough. Imposed by Democrat politicians and Democrat city councils and Democrat mayors and Democrat national presidential candidates while the Republicans refused to even engage with these communities, I put fault at Republicans as well. School choice for black kids Destroy the Democrats each year. Union cartel. It's that simple. You got 13 schools in Baltimore where a kid can't read. Every teacher should be fired. Fired. In fact, they should be privately sued for educational malpractice for still getting paid. Do you know what my job would look like if I had an O for 7,000 track record for the kids that I dealt with? Yet these people are still getting full pay in pensions. They should be run out of the school system. And guess what? Do you know what these people say? Well, they're really tough to teach. What are you a racist? Because I think that teacher unions might be. They want the perpetual failing of these schools. I think reading is a civil right. I really do. I have a radical populist opinion that if you can't read the Constitution, United States, that your government has not served you. I think if you cannot read the preamble by the age of fourth or fifth grade, if you can't read every word and know what it means generally, I know there's some words that are kind of difficult. There's. But if you cannot read the preamble of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the articles in the Constitution, I think the government has failed you as a civil rights issue. And so how do we get people to read? Well, we know how we do this. We know what schools work and what don't work. We know the most important thing to impact a kid's future is not funding. Because inner city schools have more than enough funding. Baltimore schools have been funded even more than suburban schools. And there's that ridiculous systemic racism video going around that I debunked, my debunking of. It has gone viral. Millions of views where they say, and that whole video is so unbelievably racist because they just assume that the poor person is black and the white person is, you know, the poor person's black and the rich person's white. The assumptions are so stereotypical. But in Florida, for example, every student gets the same amount of funding from the state Capitol. They do not fund their schools through property taxes. Florida being the fourth or fifth biggest state in the entire country. So the overgeneralization. That video is incredible malpractice. And it should be taken down as disinformation by the tech companies, to be honest with you. But it won't be, of course. So what do we do about this? We need to have a Marshall Plan for our inner cities, not for giving people money. Marshall plan was a US government intervention in Eastern Europe after World War II. To rebuild Eastern Europe, we need something big and bold. But guess what? Some of it has to be. Our welfare programs are going to be designed about rebuilding the family, not subsidizing fatherlessness. I want you to understand the imagery here right now. When you pay your taxes, you guys are paying your taxes. Coming up in July, July 15, because we moved the date. Pay your taxes, send it in. You know that we have thousands of people on US Government payroll that go knock on doors to make sure fathers aren't in the home. It's the fatherlessness enforcement squad. No, seriously, they go knock on doors and they say, excuse me, Mrs. Smith, we know you're getting a welfare check. Single mother check. We're Just here to make sure you're actually a single mother. We're paying our own people to make sure the families stay broken. Now the intention is, well, we have to help single mothers. I totally agree with that, by the way. I think we should. But the intention has now been turned into a subsidy to keep the family broken. In fact, it's even worse than that. It's a subsidy to make sure the mother never gets married. In fact, it's a subsidy to reinforce the cowardice of the man that abandons the family because then he has an out like, well, I don't want you to lose your check. I don't want you to lose your check. If I marry you, our income might be altered. And so the opposite. You should subsidize the good behavior. Now some people say, well, that will do harm because it will keep abusive families together. Okay, I'm sure there's some provision that can be written in that if a man ends up being abusive to the woman. But how about this? How about you have a sunset period to it? And by the way, why is the government involved in this at all? This should be a church led issue. Block grant it to private religious institutions that will then dole it out and then you could go through that capacity. So Benny, here's how you kind of summarize this. You have black leader Democrats that are misincentivized to actually keep black people perpetually poor. And I can't think of anything more evil than that.
- [55:45]
Charlie Kirk
There was a time. This is another Thomas Sowell who absolutely required viewing and reading, especially in this moment in American history. There was a time after the Civil Rights act was passed where the black middle class was growing at a faster pace, a far more blistering pace than the white middle class, if I'm remembering my data once again sourcing to Tom Sowell correctly. Also a spectacular quote from him is about how those who wish to keep us racially divided are doing so because they lose all power when there's racial harmony. The point is to keep people divided. Yes, and I find that again, abjectly and absolutely insidious.
- [56:40]
Benny Johnson
It is.
- [56:41]
Charlie Kirk
It's antithetical to the American experiment. It's antithetical to the Christian basis and founding of our nation. And in quite blunt terms, damn it, it's racist.
- [56:54]
Benny Johnson
Of course it is. It's just racism. Left is racist, the right is not. Now are there individuals on the very fringe, Identitarian right, if you will. I hate these terms left versus right because they're so freaking inaccurate. That might be Racist, Yeah. Guess what? You know what we do with those people? We kick them out and we do. They have no place in our movement. But then you have entire superstructures on the Democrat Party that are the most bitterly racist. People that advance it and admit it, like Joe Biden.
- [57:28]
Charlie Kirk
It's quite a time, it's quite a time right now to be living in this country. How do conservatives reclaim that proud history of being the party of freedom? Because the alternative has never been more dire. Well, I am a firm believer to put a point on this, we'll be making a feature length documentary about this at Turning Point USA very soon. But I'm a firm believer that the real enemy right now in the American streets and the real enemy right now that is torching your business and performing to the letter. What their instruction manual has been given to them is Marxist. It's Marxism and they it's postmodernist.
- [58:13]
Benny Johnson
But yeah, you're right.
- [58:17]
Charlie Kirk
The copy and paste of Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto and every communist revolution that has toppled capitalism is being employed right now in our country. I do find it also very chillingly ironic that if you go through the Communist Manifesto and you ask at the very end, they ask, what does a communist society look like? What does a perfect communist society look like? Well, you have guaranteed federal job. You have guaranteed basic income. You have free education, government run free education. You have a state that is more powerful than the church. You have the destruction and demonization of private industry, private property. The bourgeois ceases to exist. There should be no millionaires or billionaires. That is the tenets of the modern left spelled out plainly in 1848 by Karl Marx. It is the plank, the platform that the party will put forward at the DNC convention in a couple months.
- [59:30]
Benny Johnson
They'll boo God again.
- [59:32]
Charlie Kirk
Yes. And so if you were to ask where the major, where the major cultural rift is right now, I would argue that far more than white versus black, the actual rub is freedom versus tyranny right now.
- [59:50]
Benny Johnson
Yes. And do you know what most Republicans and conservatives and pundits say when you bring up socialism as their reason why you can't support it? Think about the talking point you hear
- [60:05]
Charlie Kirk
so often that it sucks.
- [60:09]
Benny Johnson
How are you going to pay for it? What an awful, weak, cowardly, morally questionable response. How many times have you heard that, Benny?
- [60:20]
Charlie Kirk
A lot.
- [60:21]
Benny Johnson
How are we going to pay for it?
- [60:22]
Charlie Kirk
It's a horrible talking point. Of course you could pay for it.
- [60:25]
Benny Johnson
Of course you could pay for it. But think about the question. You've already admitted that it's valid.
- [60:30]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
- [60:31]
Benny Johnson
So every time we talk about it, every. Not every person, but so many people. Oh, but how are you gonna pay for this? Hold on a second. What if I could? Is it a good idea?
- [60:43]
Charlie Kirk
We've just proven that you can print trillions out of nowhere, $6 trillion for fun.
- [60:50]
Benny Johnson
Instead, the question should be, or the response should be, your ideas are evil.
- [60:57]
Charlie Kirk
Your ideas have led to a body count of 100 million plus people.
- [61:01]
Benny Johnson
But even if they didn't, let's pretend that there wasn't a cemetery of a hundred million human beings. That if I listed every name, I'd be here for the next six years. To give you an idea of how long it would take of every human being that's died under autocratic collectivism in the last 500 years. Because it hasn't just been under Marxism, there's Rossoianism. People have used collectivized control for so long. But let's pretend that we've just reinvented it. It's still evil. Because you are your own sovereign human being. You are not a slave to the state. Rights are what you have in the state of nature. Rights are not given to you by the state. They are not. Rights are given to you by God, naturally. So if you were alone in the forest, what do you have? Your right to consciousness, Your right to property, what you create. Your right to speech, your right to defend your existence. Your right to not have some autocrat come and steal whatever you might have from you in the state of nature. That's the baseline of rights. We call them negative rights, actually, not positive rights. Because negative rights are. We are worried they're going to be taken away from us. That's the way we design our government. John Locke did the most amazing scholarship on this of any other person. He inspired the Founding more so than any other person. And in the Declaration of Independence, our birth certificate, it says clearly, laws of nature and nature's God. When you write King George, you know what they were really saying? The higher power than you. But do you know what we don't talk about enough in the founding of America? What was America before 1776? It was religious colonies of people that read the Bible every single day and that were under some form of self rule that understood the scriptures, that understood that there should not be anything higher than than God. And King George was playing God with the colonies and King George was becoming the oppressive ruler. The Tower of Babel, if you will. King George was trying to poke and prod the American colonists. And it's because of their belief in a higher power, that they were compelled to revolution. And Even then, only 3% of the American population actually participated in the revolution, and only 30% supported the revolution. In fact, 30% of Americans during the revolution were helping the Brits. In fact, 30% did nothing. 30% participated, 3% fought, and 30% helped the Brits like Benedict Arnold. And so you have this incredible experiment, and so people say in the manifesto, as you mentioned, free housing, free this, free that, like that's evil. We gotta start talking on moral terms now, man. Not technocratic, utilitarian corporations, corporate tool. Oh, well, I don't think it's good for our bottom line. And that will destroy business. You're going to, first of all, irrelevant, immaterial, and you're going to lose on that argument. Instead, you need a much more deeper philosophical point, which is rights cannot be given to you. It's not something you get in a breadline or an old country buffet. Oh, you have a right to health care. That's nonsense. You have a right to health care. You have a right to be able to not have the government get in the way of what you see most important, most fit in your life. And the lack of people being able to articulate this and understand this has led to our road to tyranny or road to serfdom. So you have Republicans that say, well, how are you going to pay for it? You're basically admitting that you got nothing except. Or the other talking point which is equally as bad is, oh, it's not as good as you think it is. Yeah, free health care. It's actually a pretty bad idea because the health care is going to suck. No, even if it was great, I don't want it. Even if the health care works, you're going to lose the utilitarian argument too, because they will publish study after study through their mass propaganda machine to convince people it's a good idea. But where they'll never be able to convince anyone is should government do that? That's where the terrain must be fought on this. And Republicans have refused to do that for far too long.
- [65:24]
Charlie Kirk
What is the call to action for a moment when the mob can storm the gates of the White House, the mob can break into a historic church that has been around for 200 years, the church of Presidents, and light it ablaze. And then you watch the bishop of that church condemn the president for standing outside with a Bible. What moment are we in right now in America, where it's seen as permissible to burn churches? Where was the America of I believe earlier in my Life, I turned 34 this week where a burning of anything, a mosque, a synagogue, a church, regardless of the denomination.
- [66:24]
Benny Johnson
Mormon church.
- [66:25]
Charlie Kirk
Yes. And then all leaders would have coalesced around that moment, right? There would have been this great gatherings, this revival of the church, saying, this is wrong. Even if it happened to a mosque or a synagogue, everyone would have said, this is wrong.
- [66:42]
Benny Johnson
Woke Christians were posting black squares.
- [66:45]
Charlie Kirk
Where was that? Why were guys like you and I in this extreme minority online who were
- [66:53]
Benny Johnson
standing up and saying, well, I'll tell you right now. And for people watching this, subscribe to my show. I have a very important message coming out tomorrow. And the name of the episode is this is personal. I, on the show coming out tomorrow, I literally pushed the fire alarm. This is it. I'm not trying to be too hyperbolic or too, you know me, I don't get into this kind of language that often, but if this continues with so few people speaking out, with the cowards running the roost and with courageous people coming under the assault that we have to come under, we will not have a country in a decade. Will not, will not have a country. This is not something that you can go collect signatures and petition afterwards. You can't vote this up or down in an election. This is a cultural thing now. It just is. And so what's the call to action? Stop being a freaking coward. Like, stop. Stop worrying endlessly about what your friend. Those aren't your friends. Who are you? Are you a patriot? Or are you gonna be part of that 30% that helped King George? Are you gonna be part of that 30% that go helped the enemy? Are you gonna go be Benedict Arnold? Because if you are, declare your colors now and we'll fight with our small, fighty men. And we will die standing and fighting. Not in our niece. They want to take every single one of us out. If there was a button to take out Turning Point and the Charlie Kirk show and Benny Johnson and Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin and every single one of us, if they could push that button, they would do it in an instant. One second. And they are trying to move the Overton window, the Overton window from what is unthinkable to what is acceptable. But it also can go the other way from what is acceptable to unthinkable. Where I will tweet something like, white privilege is a racist myth rooted in untruth designed to destroy our country. Something I've tweeted for Five years now. I'm getting calls that people are getting kicked out of school and getting fired from their job for liking and retweeting something. I've been tweeting for five years that because one evil police officer and three police officers that did nothing and cowardice is not something that's hard to find find all of a sudden. That singular incident is a reason why we have to reconfigure the entire western society. One bad police officer who does something evil and kills a man on the side of the street is a reason to destroy everything that our grandfathers and our forefathers fought for and blood for in the streets. One bad police officer is the reason why we have to destroy World War II memorials. One bad police officer is the reason why the burnt down a 200-year-old church. One bad police officer is the reason why we now have to distribute millions of dollars from corporate America to the most radical elements of Black Lives Matter that wants to destroy the western prescribed nuclear family. One bad evil police officer you're trying to tell me is now the reason why we have to have NFL players going through multiple apologies for standing with the flag? One bad police officer is the reason we're going to basically destroy our country? Is that what I'm hearing? Because that's basically what I'm hearing right now. Because usually the Overton window only changes after something like Pearl harbor or 9 11. Not one police officer that puts a neck on an unarmed black man who does something evil. That singular incident is not our country. We're not systemically racist. We're systemically unracist. So if you're telling me that one police officer, one guy and three cowards around him, and again, cowards are not hard to find. That. That does not. People say that surprises me. Read history, okay? Read history. That video should trouble any civil and decent human being. But that video should not be a license for the arson of America. That license, that video is not a reason to uncap the button, to decide to destroy, to push the thermonuclear weapon on western society. So just so I'm understanding, one incident in Minnesota is the straw that breaks the camel's back. And if that's the case, shame on America. If we're gonna let one individual and three cowards break our country in half. We didn't have much of a country. We didn't because we're stronger than this. At least I thought we were.
- [71:24]
Charlie Kirk
Ouch. If you know the history of America, you'll know exactly how much this country has gone through and exactly what kind of a country it is, you'll realize that it's a country that always reforms itself. It's a country of reform. There's no such thing as a perfect.
- [71:42]
Benny Johnson
This is a country of self correction.
- [71:44]
Charlie Kirk
Yes.
- [71:44]
Benny Johnson
And that is the Western story. And so the matrix is human beings, the decision making matrix. Human beings are broken by original sin biblical idea, right? Unlike the Rossoian idea that human beings are broken only because the system around them is broken by people that weren't smart enough. That's what the left thinks. That's I want to get rid of prisons, get rid of police, because the system they think is making human beings do bad things. We think that human beings are naturally awful. Therefore we first and foremost want to make sure that government does not get used by the awful human beings against us. That's kind of a basic thing. But secondly, the idea of Western society is a pursuit towards gradual, intentional, disciplinary self correction, not radical progressive revolution. Right? Because we also know that if you radically try to redefine something big and you get it wrong, what you're going to get is far worse than what you were trying to correct. And so the story of America through women's suffrage, the civil rights of the 1960s, the Civil War, the suffrage of black voters is a gradual pursuit of self correction, but also the restraint against things that should not have to happen, like actually saying no to really, really bad ideas. Ronald Reagan was so good at shutting down. The left wanted this to happen like 30 years ahead of time. Like the left actually wanted their communist revolution to happen in the 80s. You know, we've convinced ourselves that in the Cold War, it was a one sided cold war, that we were the only ones that were sending agents into the other country. And we never had the multidimensional maturity to ever think, well, what if the KGB were sending people into our country, we were sending spy planes over Moscow, we were sending people into Eastern Europe. We know that, I mean the agency has said it and we know people that have done it. Did you ever think that maybe the Soviets were sending people into our country? Did you ever have the, maybe the like, wow, a country of 100 million people that controls most of the Eastern hemisphere, controls Afghanistan, has an outpost 90 miles from Miami in Cuba, has overthrown Rhodesia and turned it into Zimbabwe. Do you ever think that maybe they're also trying to infiltrate us? And if that's so, which is a logical presupposition, did they ever leave? Did they ever stop? What we're seeing now is the 30 year byproduct of a lot of Eastern Soviet forces that played nice with people like Bernie Sanders. That's why he honeymooned there. He was honeymooning there because he got insight into their plan to radically redefine Western society. He didn't honeymoon there because of the weather. He didn't honeymoon there because they have really good beaches in Stalingrad. He definitely didn't honeymoon there because he was overly interested in learning about Russian literature, of which Russian literature stopped being worthwhile as soon as they took over the freaking country and burned all the books. Rasputin is only as good as, as like a couple pages of it. It's informative, but it's kind of awful. No, he went there because he wanted the instruction manual. Bernie Sanders honeymoon there because he wanted to go to boot camp. That's why. We have videos of Bernie Sanders chilling out, laughing with his best buddies on honeymoon. We have a video of it. So Bernie learned. Bernie was informed. He wasn't alone. Like, when you go back to America, you'll have a lot of other comrades that will be vocal and unvocal. And you know where he found most of his friends? In the university. In the university that bitterly hates our country. And now you're seeing the byproduct of our broken, rotten university system. They've educated so many upper middle class suburbanites because we hypnotized people on the upper income distribution. They must send their college to elite, their kids to elite schools. And then they wonder, well, why are my kids. Why do they hate America? Well, first of all, you're also donating hundreds of millions of dollars to those schools, number one. Number two, you wonder why they hate America. The entire institution hates our country. They literally have Confucius institutes on over 100 US campuses that are funded by the Chinese Communist Party. Maybe this will be a moment when America realizes that the Cold War never ended, the wall fell, but the cells and the sleeper cells of the agents never disappeared. And people say, oh, Charlie, what's your basis for this? Go back to KGB testimony of agents that have now come out and they've said that this was done, that the useful idiots of America will be the downfall. This has been in declassified agency memos. Now it's all public. People don't like talking about.
- [76:41]
Charlie Kirk
Is amazing how history repeats and it's amazing how things, how, how this can't happen without two groups, identitarian religious groups hating each other. And these elements saw the Black Lives Matter movement and moment as a Trojan horse.
- [77:05]
Benny Johnson
Amen.
- [77:06]
Charlie Kirk
To push these elements into the streets. And there was a barrier that could protect them and they could go out and be radical in this name and they could co opt this movement. They could co opt this movement and attempt to co opt America and attempt to fundamentally tear down our history, our government, our rights, and do it in a way that Marx would have been proud of.
- [77:30]
Benny Johnson
So I'm going to continue with the bad news and I'm going to tell you some good news. Bad news is conservatives aren't even getting close to fighting right now. We're not even close. In fact, we are the most docile have ever seen us ever. And now there's a reason for this. The lockdowns contributed to it greatly. We've atrophied. Our muscles have grown weak. You and I, we have. We never stopped fighting because of the lockdown. We fought harder, we fought better, we fought more agile. But we're not like most conservatives. But for the first time in the Trump presidency, we're on defense. Why? Because they literally took his rallies away. They took away the heartbeat. From the moment he announced, they took it away off the table. Perfect time to attack. Greatest asset of the enemy, when that is gone. In all military type technology booklets, if you read military strategy, of which I do Art of War, when the greatest asset of the enemy gets removed from the equation, that's when you attack. It could be because of a hurricane, a storm, supply chain disruption, whatever it is, that's when you go for the jugular right there. That's what they've done. Donald Trump is not able to communicate with his base. He can't monopolize the news cycle. Instead, he has left the social media communication. He's finally getting his rallies back. Thank goodness. That's why we felt like we're on defense, right? It's felt like we've been in this perpetual retreat for months. Like everywhere I turn, there's another leftist politic. They're abolishing the police. Like, oh, great, they just took cops off tv. Oh, okay. We can't go to church. Couldn't go to church on Easter. Marijuana shops remain open. Oh, what do you know? De Blasio's defunding the entire New York Police Department. Basically. Mayor Eric Garcetti, 100 million outside of police, it's like, what is going on? It's like this because the left is in record aggressive offensive mode. And we're on defense. The reason this is happening is because we're not actually pushing back. They're actual cowards. Do you notice the left was so scrambled for so long because we were actually pushing them backwards. We were confirming justices, we were putting forth Kavanaugh, we were putting forth Gorsuch, we were passing tax reform, we were building the wall, we moved the embassy. And we had them so scattered and we had them so distracted for three and a half years that the left could not focus on a singular issue that they didn't have us literally locked down in the homes and ready for revolution. Instead, they're like, my gosh, he's. The Iranian thing is totally screwed up. Like, the Israeli thing is screwed up. The southern border is a total catastrophe. China, don't even get me started there. The economy's on fire. Stock market's record high. They didn't have enough activists to go get in the streets over every single one of these things. Like, wait, do we go protest the Israeli embassy or like the Iranian embassy, or do we go outside of the White House? But what made the ingredients for this is they literally shut everything down. They shut down the American conversation on a singular topic of the Chinese coronavirus. We were kind of talking about China, but that issue was kind of difficult for people to wrap their heads around. And finally, when public opinion was finally turning around the menace of China, this awful incident happens. Awful incident with the prior Ahmaud Arbery incident, which is also unspeakable. But that was not police brutality. Let's just be clear, right? That guy's not a police officer. He might have been formally in law enforcement, but he was not a badge and credentialed police officer. Sure as heck didn't act like one. The Black Lives Matter then saw their movement, their moment. They said, that's it. Full court press. 10 out of 10, the Jets. We are doing our Tet offensive right now. And we, as conservatives, were so unbelievably unprepared. I have a note. Could show you the. I could show it to you in the other room where I said this. I literally circled five times. George Floyd. I saw it. As soon as I saw this thing metastasizing, I'm like, oh, my gosh. They have. They have every ingredient they need. People are bored. People are looking for purpose. Like, the media is looking for a great pivot because the economy's coming back and reopening. And you see all this come together. And so we're on defense. That's the bad news. So we gotta stop. We gotta re. We kinda gotta. We kind of have to rearm ourselves in military terms, right? We've already been retreating, and we have to launch counteroffensives so if I'm Trump, I'd sign every freaking executive order I have that will make them so distracted. I'd pardon Roger Stone. I'd pardon Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. I'd move the embassy again to Jerusalem just to tick him off. I would defund the Iranians again. I'd slap sanctions on China. I'd declare five emergency declarations on the southern border. I'd say, I'm going to pack the court. I'd put somebody. I'm being somewhat facetious here, but you got to start launching fires here because it's not going in a good direction. Because they got America hyper focused on a lie. And the lies are the best instruments of the left. And they repeat that lie. Here's the good news, though. I have right here the Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. And they follow this thing to a T, but they're not following it right now. Rule number eight, keep the pressure on. Boy, are they following that. Right, Benny? Rule number five, ridicule is man's most potent weapon. They use that against Trump. They try to every single day. Number 13, they followed this rule better. And for those that don't know Rules for Radicals, it is the book written by Saul Alinsky, who. This is the playbook of the left. You want to know what the left is going to do before they do it? Know the playbook of the left. He literally wrote the dedication of this book to Lucifer, the first rebel and Fallen angel number 13. They're following this like the gospel. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. My goodness. Are they following that? Are they following that, Benny? I mean, like, unbelievable. Are they following that? And the reason they're following, like the police officers, they found it. Now, where they are failing, though, and why they're going to fail is they're violating one of their rules. You know which one it is?
- [82:54]
Charlie Kirk
I don't have a memorized.
- [82:55]
Benny Johnson
Like, number two.
- [83:00]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. Never go outside the expertise of your people. Do you see that interview on CNN with the Minnesota councilwoman?
- [83:07]
Benny Johnson
That's why they're going. They're violating their own Alinsky rules. Tell our audience.
- [83:12]
Charlie Kirk
So you have the chairwoman of the Minneapolis City Council and she is going on CNN and being asked by Alison Camerota a very rational and completely justified question, which is, what happens when a criminal breaks into my home and I, a woman, am worried inside of my house? Who do I call? And the person who is pushing this, the woman who is now the face of the defund the police movement, looks into the camera and says very directly, you're privileged for not wanting to have your children raped, killed for yourself, to be murdered. Horrifically, you're privileged. This comes from a place of privilege. If a monster broke into your house, who is ready to do unspeakable evil to you and your family, you need to check your privilege and you need to sit back and let that monster do that thing, even if it ends in your death. Fighting your privilege is more valuable than your life. She didn't say precisely that, but anyone who watched knows that is exactly the subtext. The subtext was you shouldn't call the cops because calling the cops is racist. And there you have the crystallization of this number two rule, which is you shouldn't go outside of your own experience. They're not ready to answer the question,
- [84:49]
Benny Johnson
should we find instead of staying disciplined on police brutality and a small gradual march towards abolition of police, they overplayed their hands. They sent some numbskull on CNN who basically invalidates their entire movement. Anyone with a functioning cognitive capacity says, I don't know about that.
- [85:05]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
- [85:05]
Benny Johnson
So now here's the other reason why they are violating one of Alinsky's rules. And it's not one of these 13, but it's something he wrote about a lot. Saul Alinsky said a true radical. There's not someone who goes in the streets and bashes windows and burns police cars. Alinsky wrote extensively against this sort of activism. He thought it was reprehensible, thought it was self defeating. He thought it turned public opinion against socialist communist aims and goals and objectives. Instead, Saulinsky said a true radical slicks back his hair, wears a three piece suit, goes to work every single day, never revealing who he really is, but methodically and assuredly goes towards his accomplished goal. That a true radical for him is one that's disciplined. A radical for him is like Barack Obama, ultimate Alinskyite. Barack Obama is the absolute embodiment of Saulinski. Bernie Sanders is not. Bernie Sanders supports the arson. Bernie Sanders says the most outrageous things. Saulinsky also talked about, in order for a radical to be successful, you have to embrace the symbology of the country you're trying to take over. Embrace the flag, wear the flag, talk good things about the flag, say great things about the history of the country. Barack Obama, there's only. There's blue states and red states, but we're all United States of America. You know how you said that?
- [86:27]
Charlie Kirk
That was Bill Clinton, but yeah, you
- [86:30]
Benny Johnson
know how it is. That's a little better. I did have a little, kind of a Blend of the Clinton at the end. The point being is that Barack Obama was the perfect Alinskyite. They're disobeying their own rules. And here's a very interesting historical observation. This is the first communist movement in the history of the world that's trying to take over a country while saying they hate that country. Right? Typically correct. A communist movement. They are ostensibly pro the nation they're trying to take over. Fidel Castro took over Cuba by saying to the people of Cuba, the rulers here actually aren't Cuban. I'm the pro Cuban. Lenin took over Russia by using the 12th century imagery of Russia. The Vietnamese revolution. They said we're actually the ethnic Vietnamese. This communist Marxist revolution in our country is actually. They're saying we hate the country now. Give us power. Like, what if they get wise and they actually end up truly embracing the symbology of America? We have a real problem. The problem for them, not problem for us, is they have such anti American leaders that just foment rage against our country, like Ilhan Omar. I don't know how that pivot is gonna happen. I don't. Ilan Omar says nothing but awful things about America. She might as well be someone that has been transplanted and put into the US Congress and be like, can you just tell us what it like? If you were not an American congresswoman and you were like, I don't know, working for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, what would you say? Go like, that was basically her, you know, marching orders. If you were trying to do that, that's her. It's hard to convince the working class to go get behind that. But what's dangerous is where Bernie used to be. Where Bernie used to be when he was like, why don't we have strong borders? To be an American means to be fair. And that's why we shouldn't have billionaires like that old kind of, let's just say, narrative. Bernie was really dangerous for us. Like super dangerous. You understand what I'm saying? When he was talking about the baseline of the country is actually most compatible with him, that the history is actually harmonic with his ridiculously radical ideas. Instead, the AOC and the Ayanna Pressleys, they can't. They have no discipline. And there's like, the history of our country is incompatible with our ideas. And people are like, well, come on. Like, I love this place. Like, why would I want to vote for you, man? And that's why the communists took power so quickly in Russia and all these other countries. In Russia and in Italy, that was more Fascist. But in India for some short period of time, in Southeast Asia, Cambodia and Laos and in Korea because they convinced the people that they were the true instruments of the history of the country they were trying to take over. Email us your questions, guys. Freedom charliekirk.com Freedom charliekirk.com We'll take a couple questions here. Benny, is that okay?
- [89:24]
Charlie Kirk
Let's do it.
- [89:25]
Benny Johnson
Hi, Benny. What shows are you currently watching and what are you learning from them? Carla from Missouri. Maybe she's watching Ozark.
- [89:36]
Charlie Kirk
Is it good?
- [89:37]
Benny Johnson
Ozark is terrific. It's one of my favorite shows. It's phenomenal archetypically. It's amazing because the masculine archetype is played by the woman and the feminine archetype is played by the man. It's absolutely terrific. Ozark is a great modern depiction of the issues with suburbia, the issues of a kind of emaciated male. I don't mean that physically, but I just mean that kind of what happens when a man tries to find his place by doing things that are borderline ethical. And it's terrific. It's about a journey of passage for the young individuals in the story. It's terrific. Archetypically. It is to a T. It's phenomenal. So what are you watching, buddy?
- [90:23]
Charlie Kirk
So to answer your question, other than the required viewing of Tucker Carlson Tonight in our household, an absolutely required, required viewing. Specifically right now, he's just hitting his stride and one of the last honest and courageous news anchors out there. We follow that. We follow that by having the office come on. Because one, the office is always a good reminder of a simpler time in America where you could still make these style jokes. We still make politically incorrect jokes and like laugh at the way normal human beings can.
- [91:12]
Benny Johnson
You talk about the utility of comedy because we're. It's dying.
- [91:15]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, it's dying. Well, there's, there's something called, I mean, there's something called anti comedy, right? Which is like comedy for the sake of not being funny, comedy for the sake of social change. And it's killing. If you're going to go all the way back to the beginning of our conversation. These are pressure relievers. These let us all know that we're one as a people. When we can all get together and laugh at a Dave Chappelle or Ricky Gervais, when we can get together and laugh at our politicians. It was something very special when SNL used to be funny and make fun of Democrats and make fun of leftists and they skewed Al Gore. I was. This was When I was very young. But Al Gore's depiction on SNL was just hysterical and damaging to him.
- [92:04]
Benny Johnson
It was ridiculed. Let's go a level deeper. Soviets and all the totalitarians banned comedy and all this. Do you know why they banned comedy? You have good answers to it, but answer first and then I'll tell you why deeper.
- [92:17]
Charlie Kirk
Well, since you already know the answer, why don't you tell me?
- [92:19]
Benny Johnson
Good comedy is truth. So think about what is actually funny. Things that you have seen or encountered in the real world that resonate with you, that are portrayed in a way that deeply harmonize with personal health experience. For example, Michael Scott in the Office where he says, my favorite quote from Abraham Lincoln is, if you are a racist, I will attack you with the North. And that is the motto that I bring into the office every single day. And so it's such an outrageous thing, right? It's rooted in the truth of this guy, obviously is misapplying a quote. But we all know somebody like that. Seinfeld. The greatest example of deeply held truth is why Seinfeld succeeded. The greatest television show in America history. Show about nothing. But it's a show about. It touched everything. Show about labeling, Salsa versus Seltzer, a show of a black and white cookie, a show of a Soup Nazi, a show of Elaine trying to find her place as a single woman in New York City. And George, who plays the jester archetype and the perpetual doomed to failure archetype better than anyone in television that I could possibly imagine. And so why do things resonate? What is comedy? What is comedy? It's truth. Dave Chappelle's funny because he says something that you're not allowed to say that you know is pretty true. That's why the left hates comedy. They hate comedy because they hate truth. That's why all the late night talk shows, no one laughs, they just clap in agreement because it's basically MSNBC with an orchestra next to you with better looking people. It's basically what Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel is why I'll bear. And Stimmy. Fallon's less of a. He's actually pretty good. He's actually less on that continuum. But Kimmel, oh my gosh, the worst. The left hates comedy because the left hates truth. Because you know why? They know that comedy one time might be directed towards them, right?
- [94:35]
Charlie Kirk
This is why, after Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globe skewered Hollywood in one of the most legendary comedic routines ever heard, that they got rid of the host of the Oscars they just said, we're not gonna have a host. They couldn't take the fact that one man got up there and said what all the rest of America was thinking. And this hurt their feelings so badly. To be called friends of Jeffrey Epstein and to be told that their opinions don't matter has hurt their feelings so badly. The leftists of Hollywood that they banned hosts.
- [95:07]
Benny Johnson
Well, and so the left also, and more so than the right, is, they have no capacity for self deprecation.
- [95:14]
Charlie Kirk
Correct.
- [95:14]
Benny Johnson
Best comedy is self deprecation.
- [95:16]
Charlie Kirk
Correct.
- [95:17]
Benny Johnson
That's why Dave Chappelle making semi true statements about his upbringing resonate terrific. That's why Jerry Seinfeld humorized the experience of living on the Upper east side or the Upper west side as a single Jewish man in New York City. And he gave levity to it because it was self deprecating. He didn't take himself so seriously. Or the left takes themselves really seriously, like phenomenally seriously.
- [95:44]
Charlie Kirk
This is why the first thing that
- [95:45]
Benny Johnson
happens because they think of themselves as gods.
- [95:47]
Charlie Kirk
You ban free speech in communist societies. You ban ridicule, but yeah, you ban,
- [95:52]
Benny Johnson
you ban comedic expression.
- [95:54]
Charlie Kirk
You can't post a photo of Winnie the Pooh in China because it looks
- [95:58]
Benny Johnson
too much like Xi Jinping because they have no, they have no. Look, the left, the left is really a movement of people that have not fully matured into civil society. What do you do if you can't take a joke? You get upset and you throw your arms up. Yeah. That's called a nine year old. Yeah.
- [96:17]
Charlie Kirk
You're no fun at a party. No, I can tell you that.
- [96:19]
Benny Johnson
That's the left.
- [96:20]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah. There's always that guy at a party who you can't make a joke around.
- [96:24]
Benny Johnson
Right.
- [96:24]
Charlie Kirk
Who's going to check your privilege?
- [96:26]
Benny Johnson
And so there's entire south park season on it. But your South Park's gonna be cancelled soon. Yeah, It'll be by PC Bro. Correct.
- [96:33]
Charlie Kirk
PC Police.
- [96:34]
Benny Johnson
And so the comedy is one of the things that we as human beings have used as a unifying concept to allow us to move on from some of the most unspeakable horrors.
- [96:46]
Charlie Kirk
That's correct.
- [96:47]
Benny Johnson
Comedy goes all the way back to. We have evidence of comedy in 800 B.C. greece. That's really where comedy first started in open air venues. The word escapes me of what there's a very specific word for. It's a pretty easy word to remember. I can't remember. But what they call auditorium, it's not auditoriums, but it's an outdoor auditorium, open air auditoriums where the comics, if you Will would come and make fun of local events happening in Athens or in Sparta. And it was interesting because the acts or the plays would only happen once and they would live as folklore. And the idea of self deprecation and the idea of comedy actually led to the classics because comedy required thinking. I actually believe the smartest people in the world are those that are able to produce humor, good humor, sophisticated humor. It takes wit, it takes depth, it takes worldliness, it takes a vocabulary. That humor is actually the highest level of the competence hierarchy. I really believe that, that your ability to make without F words and all that, I actually don't, I don't find that's why Jerry Seinfeld is so great, is he doesn't swear. Because I think some of these comics, like they use the, you know, they swear every other word. It's so exhausting. Right. And some of them can be simultaneously funny without the swearing. Right. And I think maybe it adds to the abrasiveness of it. I don't really find much merit that argument. But in order to think, I should say, in order to make comedy, you must think. And once you have a society that does that for a couple hundred years, then all of a sudden you get a Socrates, you get a Plato, you get an Aristotle, you get the classics. And then Aristotle trained Alexander the Great. Now, I'm not saying comedy was the only reason for that. That would be foolish for me to say. There are other reasons, some of it being nutritional reasons. The Greeks actually figured out the agrarian based lifestyle. They had a shipping lanes a lot better. They were able to be more cultured. They heard other ideas, more. They kind of had like best practices. Other reasons why the Greeks were able to have this breakthrough intellectually when they did post Peloponnesian War and the Greek Civil War that, that preceded it. But you can't discount the comedy. You can't that once you get rid of that, you get rid of so much. You get rid of people's capacity to interact with each other. You get rid of people's ability to be able to take a joke. You know what Stalin, you know why he couldn't take a joke? Because he thought of himself as a God. You know what happened if he made fun of Stalin? Death camp for you.
- [99:17]
Charlie Kirk
I think there are more people in America who would know the name. Juicy Smoulier.
- [99:23]
Benny Johnson
Amphitheater is what I was thinking of.
- [99:24]
Charlie Kirk
I'm sorry, Juicy Smoulier, then Jessie Smollett.
- [99:27]
Benny Johnson
Let's talk about Jessie Smollett. Can we talk about Jesse Smollett? Yes. Of course, Jussie Smollett is seeing his vision happen right now. This is what Jesse Smollett wanted. See, Jesse Smollett made up an entire fabrication. Two MAGA hat wearing people in negative 10 degree weather come with a thin rope to try to lynch him while he's going to subway and says something awful to him and then screams this is MAGA country. And storms off. What did Jussie Smollett want out of that? Jussie Smollett wanted a race conflict in America and he wanted to be the face of it. He wanted to be the martyr that could speak on cable television against how the Trump movement was creating racist lynchings in the streets of Chicago. Of course it was all made up. He paid for it. By, by the way, if you're gonna fake a hate crime, don't use a cashier's check. Good best practices. You're gonna fake a hate crime. Probably don't hire two Nigerian brothers, like just in the how to manual of how to start a race war that should probably be there. But now Jussie Smollett, who's a criminal, indicted. I think he's indicted, right? Yeah, he was indicted. He was not indicted then he wasn't died to Kim Fox, awful person. But Jussie Smollett or whatever, Smollelet Smollett, this is what, this was his vision. He wanted this. He wanted people marching in the streets over the alleged lynching of Jussie Smollett. Never happened. No decent Trump supporter in the world would do something like that. It's not possible. I shouldn't say it's not possible. I'll abbreviate that. It's not likely. Let's be very specific for media matters watching.
- [101:14]
Charlie Kirk
Well, you are from MAGA country, you are from Chicago, so no, I'd never
- [101:17]
Benny Johnson
seen anyone wear a MAGA hat in my life in downtown Chicago, let alone at 2 o' clock in the morning when a guy's going in negative 10 degree weather to get Subway. By the way, why don't you just use Uber Eats or Postmates? You're literally worth millions of dollars and you're going to go retrieve the subway at negative 10 degree weather. And with anyone with your net worth, if you're going to eat Subway, that I guess there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. It's just awfully questionable.
- [101:42]
Charlie Kirk
He held on to the sandwich though.
- [101:44]
Benny Johnson
No, my favorite part of the entire thing is when you watch the video, it's the great. And by the way, the media doesn't cover it at all because the media is an activist media. You go watch the video of when the cops come in because they have body cams. They come in to go see Jussie Smollett. He's crying.
- [101:57]
Charlie Kirk
This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
- [102:00]
Benny Johnson
They tried to kill me the first time. The cop says, first and brilliant instinct. I love our law enforcement. Why do you still have the rope on? Why not? You know, you could take that off, right? You're right. You're right. He takes the rope off. Perfect. It's like, that's the. Why do you still have the rope on? If this happened to you,
- [102:19]
Charlie Kirk
Was that in another lifetime? That was only like two. That was only like a year ago. Like a year and a half.
- [102:23]
Benny Johnson
It was a different America.
- [102:25]
Charlie Kirk
That was a year and a half ago.
- [102:26]
Benny Johnson
But he's still. He's. Do you remember the whistleblower?
- [102:29]
Charlie Kirk
Do you remember Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman?
- [102:33]
Benny Johnson
That seems like another lifetime. Donald Trump's impeachment. Do you remember impeachment? That was his calendar year.
- [102:39]
Charlie Kirk
What timeline are we living in?
- [102:41]
Benny Johnson
We're living in a timeline of a part of American society, the left, that understands that Donald Trump actually might restore the country, that Donald Trump might actually sent that back a century. So if you're talking about scorched earth, we are going to empty our chamber of what we can do to destroy our country. Boy, have we experienced it. My goodness. Let's recap, just for those of you watching at home. We impeached a president over a singular phone call of which he did nothing wrong. That's number one. We shut down American society and brought our stock market down 40% from record near 30,000 to 18,000. 41 million people out of work celebrated by Democrats. We created $6 trillion out of thin air. We passed the largest couple spending bills in the history of modern society. Oh, and by the way, now we're marching in the streets, deciding to disband our police and calling Trump the worst person ever because he had nothing to do with the singular, awful killing of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis.
- [103:40]
Charlie Kirk
Don't forget spying on a presidential campaign.
- [103:42]
Benny Johnson
Spying on. But I don't know if that happened this year, but we're still revealing it. This is just June, by the way, Benny. Or in June.
- [103:47]
Charlie Kirk
Oh, you're talking 2020.
- [103:48]
Benny Johnson
I'm talking this year. This calendar year.
- [103:50]
Charlie Kirk
Oh, okay.
- [103:52]
Benny Johnson
And we still have no sports. And March Madness got canc. At least we had the Super Bowl. Oh, yeah, and we also forgot we almost got World War 3 with Iran in January.
- [104:04]
Charlie Kirk
Yes, Correct.
- [104:04]
Benny Johnson
Remember, that was the big thing.
- [104:05]
Charlie Kirk
Yes, correct.
- [104:06]
Benny Johnson
Trump almost didn't get us in a war with Iran. What's the question they got from you, Benny?
- [104:12]
Charlie Kirk
Charlie, what are the two historical figures you would love to see compete in a boxing match?
- [104:18]
Benny Johnson
I've answered this. I said Joseph Stalin and Buster Douglas or George Foreman or how about Conor McGregor? Okay, Joseph Stalin and Conor McGregor. I'd love to see Conor McGregor come now out of retirement and give him a good left hook right across the jaw.
- [104:35]
Charlie Kirk
Yes.
- [104:35]
Benny Johnson
I think that would be small price to pay for the 60 million people that he slaughtered.
- [104:42]
Charlie Kirk
That would be very fun to watch.
- [104:43]
Benny Johnson
What two people do you want to see in a boxing match?
- [104:45]
Charlie Kirk
I know this is going to be cheap, but I would really love to see Donald Trump and Joseph Biden box because Joe Biden talks a really big game. He's always saying he's going to take him out back. He's taking, I'm going to take. I would take him out back and
- [104:57]
Benny Johnson
I'd box his ears. I think Trump, I think he's got like a fuse that if you put him in a ring like that, I think that there would be a medic called really quick and it wouldn't be for Donald J. Trump.
- [105:08]
Charlie Kirk
No.
- [105:09]
Benny Johnson
And we're not inciting violence and we're not glorifying violence.
- [105:12]
Charlie Kirk
No. But Joseph Biden does regularly say that he would take Trump out back. He's the kind of guy that I'd take out back and I'd give him a knuckle sandwich and corn pop would be there to help me and corn
- [105:24]
Benny Johnson
pop was rolling up my leg and I like kids in my lap. You don'ty. Dog face. Pony soldier.
- [105:30]
Charlie Kirk
Learned about cockroaches.
- [105:32]
Benny Johnson
And if you even, if you even talk with a slight Indian accent, you can't even walk into a 7 11. Black men, they're super predators. These are all direct quotes from Joseph Biden. Next question.
- [105:45]
Charlie Kirk
You ain't black. Can you debunk the idea that these current race riots are no different than the Boston Tea Party?
- [105:55]
Benny Johnson
Yeah, happily. I mean the Boston Tea Party was, it was an act of military pseudo military aggression and classifying King George and what was then the English empire as an enemy of the state. So if these arsonists and individuals are now saying that they're doing this because the United States government is an enemy of the state. Okay, I didn't catch that memo. If that's the case, then you absolutely are domestic terrorists and you'll all be arrested. And first of all, secondly, the American Revolution was a righteous Rebellion using every instrument that they knew possible. Dumping tea into the Boston Tea Party. Lexington, Concord in 74, the signing of the declaration in 76, absolute dissolving of ties. If that's what antifa or the Black Lives Matter believes, then go sign the Declaration and put your names on it like our founders did. Go tell us. Because if you're deciding that all of a sudden you want to create a civil war, which is what the implication of the question is, by the way, when Andrew Cuomo says, well, this is how change sometimes happens. No, no, that's how civil war happens. Okay, like, let's be perfectly clear, okay? You know how change happens? Peacefully marching through the streets in Birmingham like Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King never said he was not an American. Martin Luther King never said he's going to dissolve ties with the United States government. Malcolm X never even said that Malcolm X was on the extreme of the violent retaliation continuum. Who said, you return a fist of the fist and you return eye for an eye. Malcolm X was very much the inspiration of the Black Power movement and the Black Panther movement. Martin Luther King had a completely different philosophy of disobedience, but neither said for a second that they're going to have an official petition to try to dissolve ties with the United States government. If that's the case of the Democrat Party, if that's the like, okay, you go sign your declaration and make sure that you sign your John Hancock really big, because then you're basically gonna give license to the Department of Justice to go arrest you. They won't, because they're cowards, but maybe that's what they believe.
- [107:48]
Charlie Kirk
It'd be nice to just get a document that stated what they believe. Really nice to have that on the
- [107:56]
Benny Johnson
Black Lives Matter website. There's three big things that people have to realize. Number one, it is to destroy the Western prescribed nuclear family. Nuclear family. They want to destroy it. Number two, they want to abolish prisons and they want to abolish the police. Is this a mainstream movement? This is where corporate America is funding, by the way, just so we understand, the biggest companies in the country, Airbnb, Nike, IBM, they're getting millions of dollars to that organization on their website that's now been platformed by mainstream corporate America.
- [108:24]
Charlie Kirk
It's terrifying.
- [108:25]
Benny Johnson
We'll take a couple more questions. You guys can email us freedom charliekirk.com and please type in Charlie Kirk showed your podcast provider and hit subscribe. Benny, what's the next question?
- [108:35]
Charlie Kirk
So, Charlie, do you see a way for America to come together after all of this, or are we permanently divided?
- [108:44]
Benny Johnson
It's a great question. People say, well, Charlie, when can we all come together? And I say, that's an admirable goal. I wish it, I hope for it. I'd love to all live in peace and harmony and, you know, be able to march for a better world tomorrow. But under what, under what alleged future? Are you saying that the left will somehow cease to exist? And so I'm not arguing for perpetual conflict or whatever you want to call that we're in right now, because I don't even know what we're divided over because we all agree that George Floyd was awful. I guess we're divided over whether the country should be destroyed or not. It's like, I guess we're divided over whether we should burn down our cities. Like, that's. No one's divided over George Floyd. No one is divided over this. We all freaking literally agree. Okay, America's divided. No, actually, we're not. I mean, if the division is whether or not we should destroy Americans inner cities, if the division is whether or not we should abolish police, okay, I'll agree with you. We're divided, like. Got it. If this division over George Floyd. No. In fact, Donald Trump had the Department of Justice there in 72 hours or less and pressed charges against Derek Chauvin. I don't understand who's divided over this. There's not, like, two sides of the story.
- [109:54]
Charlie Kirk
Like, I've never understood that either, because it does seem to be that this
- [109:58]
Benny Johnson
is the most agreeable issue in American history. Yes, but they turned it.
- [110:02]
Charlie Kirk
And I think that horrified them more than anything.
- [110:04]
Benny Johnson
Right. So they pivoted from something that is widely agreeable to something that is incorporate, agreeable and emotional. Right. Emotive. Pathological with it. And I don't mean pathological in a bad sense in this way. I just mean the pathos versus the ethos and the logos. And then they immediately pivoted all that emotion into something that is tangential but totally separate, which is America's a racist for country and cops are awful. And people are like, oh, yeah, of course. Because the George Floyd. George Floyd video is awful. So that's what we're not focusing on. Like, hold on a second. I thought you were upset about this. Like, we agree on this. Like, this little unit of agreement. Can we just stay here and prosecute and have a proper remembrance and, you know, all this. That totally on board for that. Not discounting that. But now all of a sudden they're like. Because of this, then this. That is logically incompatible. Okay? And. But it's very. It's very intentional design. It's incredibly intentional. It's people that know how to create mass movements. It's people that know how to manipulate media. It's people that think very multidimensional in how to use buzzwords and deploy tactics and get people in the streets. I mean, we're not dealing with simpletons here. I'm talking about the architects and the merchants of chaos. Like, we're not dealing with people that are just raising signs and screaming at the top of their lungs. We're dealing with very, very sophisticated individuals here that were able to get this done very, very quickly. So are we going to be unified? We'll be unified if the left ceases to be pathologically committed to destruction of America. So as long as they are in the country arguing at the levels that they're arguing and doing what they're doing, of which there's no evidence to show, they're slowing down, I don't see a Kumbaya America in my lifetime. I don't. Now, there's different volumes and different levels of that extreme that might exist, but where it's headed right now, what are we gonna be united over? We can't even be united over the flag. We can't be united over police. July 4th is gonna be like this massive point of controversy now. It is like I'm telling it right here, right now, July 4th is gonna be America's divided over how to best celebrate our country. Like, you're gonna see that New York Times op ed. I guarantee it. Like, this July 4th, I'm sitting out for George Floyd. Or systemic racism. You're gonna see. I guarantee you, you're gonna see that. What are we gonna agree on? Can't agree on God. Can't agree on church. Can't agree on the family. So what are we agreeing on? Tell me. You guys want to destroy football, Destroy everything. Like, what are we. What is the unification here, man? You can convince me of that. Maybe we can bring the country together.
- [112:37]
Charlie Kirk
Tiger King. Did we all. Is that the last moment of that?
- [112:40]
Benny Johnson
No. Because some people even disagree. Some people are like, pro Carole Baskin.
- [112:43]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, those people.
- [112:44]
Benny Johnson
No, that they.
- [112:45]
Charlie Kirk
That's the real enemy of America.
- [112:46]
Benny Johnson
Well, okay, the pro Carol Baskin people, you know. You know, you. The same people that are pro Carole Baskin are the people that listen to Alyssa Milano's podcast. Okay? Let's just put it that way. The people that are pro Carole Baskin are the people that sit out, that stand outside of Whole Foods, and they say meat is murder.
- [113:06]
Charlie Kirk
Okay, she is a Karen. She's a Definite Karen. Yes.
- [113:09]
Benny Johnson
100% yes. All right, let's take one more question. Benny, if you had to choose, would you rather be Yoda or Darth Vader?
- [113:20]
Charlie Kirk
No, Darth Vader.
- [113:21]
Benny Johnson
You have a very dark side to you.
- [113:22]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah, Darth Vader.
- [113:24]
Benny Johnson
Right.
- [113:25]
Charlie Kirk
First off, the height thing, very important, right? Like, tall. But then also, there is no one more badass in the universe.
- [113:36]
Benny Johnson
Oh, come on. That's not totally true.
- [113:38]
Charlie Kirk
There's no one more badass.
- [113:40]
Benny Johnson
But he's his moral. The only character flawed. The only character archetypically very questionable. Whoa.
- [113:49]
Charlie Kirk
The hero arc is not. So the reverse hero arc is actually Darth Vader. The real hero of the original trilogies is Darth Vader. He kills the Emperor. He saves his son. His son was dying. He was dead. Darth Vader is the one who made the tough decision. Luke was always just a good old boy. A good boy at heart. He's like a farm boy.
- [114:07]
Benny Johnson
Darth Vader. Darth Vader is an abolition of an entire planet.
- [114:12]
Charlie Kirk
It was a peaceful protest.
- [114:13]
Benny Johnson
Oh, yeah? Is that right?
- [114:14]
Charlie Kirk
Yes.
- [114:16]
Benny Johnson
Planet I don't, like, disappear. You see, this whole, like, pro Darth Vader community in the Star wars revisionist history is garbage.
- [114:25]
Charlie Kirk
Okay, couple things. I'll just state it very clearly. I'll say it very clearly. The actual hero's arc in the original trilogy is Darth Vader.
- [114:33]
Benny Johnson
When you say, do you mean New Hope strikes back Last, not last Jedi. What are they? Return of the Jedi. Right.
- [114:38]
Charlie Kirk
Who is the person who was beyond redemption, who came back and legitimately saved the entire story? They saved the entire Luke.
- [114:48]
Benny Johnson
Luke was tempted by the dark side. Luke had his moments of temptation to fall. Luke is not a farm boy. He was the hero's journey. The hero's journey arc literally starts with innocence. Call to action, meet your mentor, build your team. Find out the great evil. Realize it's really yourself. Fight the evil within yourself. Slay the dragon, return to innocence.
- [115:10]
Charlie Kirk
But he didn't slay the dragon. In fact, he lost to the Emperor, and he was dying. And Darth Vader is the one who decided to save his son's life. The best argument, and there's this shot, the best shot in all of Star wars is the Vader's helmet being illuminated by the lightning bolts coming out of the Emperor's hands. And he's just looking, and he's looking back, and he's making this moral decision.
- [115:33]
Benny Johnson
The best argument you could make, and this is that. This is the one I would make on your behalf, is that there's actually. That Luke and Darth Vader are actually the same character. That's what I said.
- [115:43]
Charlie Kirk
It's the reverse.
- [115:43]
Benny Johnson
No, no, but the Skywalker archetype is actually the same, is that they're playing off each other and they finally meet at the end. That makes sense like that. That's the best argument, that Vader and Luke are actually the same character.
- [115:54]
Charlie Kirk
I called it the reverse here.
- [115:55]
Benny Johnson
The father son, basically, that kind of
- [115:57]
Charlie Kirk
start off as evil.
- [115:58]
Benny Johnson
Yoda's basically the Gandalf, right? He's basically the sage mentor of which is. Has premonitions and is able to see things ahead of time and offer the wisdom down to the hero to be able to instruct him to fight the great evil.
- [116:12]
Charlie Kirk
Also, I mean, this is such an easy question because in the movies that then have now come out Disney version,
- [116:18]
Benny Johnson
Yoda dies well, right?
- [116:20]
Charlie Kirk
Yoda does not become better. Yoda becomes worse in these movies.
- [116:24]
Benny Johnson
I mean, he decays, basically.
- [116:26]
Charlie Kirk
Well, yes. I mean, in the Disney. In the Disney. In Disney, Star wars and in the prequels.
- [116:29]
Benny Johnson
What do you mean? Disney, Star wars, they're all Lucasfilm, weren't they?
- [116:33]
Charlie Kirk
Well, so in the prequels, Yoda I don't think becomes better. Even though we're seeing, you mean flipping
- [116:38]
Benny Johnson
around Phantom Menace, Clone wars and flipping around the lightsaber. I don't think that added anything to Yoda.
- [116:44]
Charlie Kirk
I believe that Darth Vader shockingly, did become better.
- [116:47]
Benny Johnson
I thought that was fan service, by
- [116:48]
Charlie Kirk
the way, in Rogue One. I thought it was awesome.
- [116:51]
Benny Johnson
Rogue One, awful. People liked that one. I thought it was awful.
- [116:53]
Charlie Kirk
No, it's the only good 10 minutes the film. But it was great.
- [116:56]
Benny Johnson
What Was the best 10 minutes?
- [116:58]
Charlie Kirk
When Vader starts. Vader starts slaughtering the men trying to protect Princess Leia on the emergency on the ship that she's escaping from. End of Rogue One, and he just goes nuts.
- [117:13]
Benny Johnson
But Rogue One and he just turns. Where New Hope begins.
- [117:16]
Charlie Kirk
Yes, got it. And it's an extension of story. It's very cool.
- [117:22]
Benny Johnson
I'm a big Star wars fan. I love it. Because these stories are thousands of years old. The hero's journey, the sage mentor, the destruction of the great and total centralized power, which is the Death Star. And that archetypically plays itself out at the end of the New Hope, how evil always comes back. You can never actually get rid of it. There's no, like, abolition of evil. That it's going to come back. That. That Evil, even if you defeat it in the short term, that will rebound that your existence is actually that struggle of good versus evil. It's terrific. In fact, if you want to talk about a series that embodies the great stories that built the West, Star wars does it almost better than anything else. Lord of the Rings probably does it the best. Harry Potter is in that category. But Star wars does it unbelievably well.
- [118:06]
Charlie Kirk
What is America in the Star wars saga? Where are we now? What. What version? What?
- [118:12]
Benny Johnson
Let's subtract the social justice warrior Star wars of recent memory. Is that fair?
- [118:16]
Charlie Kirk
Which Star wars movie are we now in?
- [118:18]
Benny Johnson
Because I'm starting to think Empire Strikes Back.
- [118:19]
Charlie Kirk
Starting to think that it's Clone War.
- [118:24]
Benny Johnson
That's very optimistic of you.
- [118:25]
Charlie Kirk
The Clone Wars.
- [118:26]
Benny Johnson
I think we're in the Empire Strikes Back.
- [118:28]
Charlie Kirk
It was just a mess.
- [118:29]
Benny Johnson
So I think. So hear me out here. I think Donald Trump is Luke Skywalker.
- [118:34]
Charlie Kirk
Okay, I'm listening. I'm listening.
- [118:36]
Benny Johnson
Donald Trump is Luke Skywalker. All right?
- [118:38]
Charlie Kirk
Because the hair. Blonde hair, floppity.
- [118:41]
Benny Johnson
The wisdom.
- [118:43]
Charlie Kirk
And Mark Hamill's gonna be pissed when he.
- [118:46]
Benny Johnson
Oh, by the way, we're gonna cut this up. I'm gonna tweet it at him. It's gonna be epic. So Donald Trump is Luke Skywalker. Unsuspecting hero, comes from a different type, totally disconnected type background. Now, it's not a perfect comparison, but it's pretty good, right? Donald Trump enters in unexpectedly and with unbelievably distant odds. Up against everyone saying he can't do it. He builds a team, right? Han Solo, probably Mike. That's probably not Mike Pence. No, it would be Mike Pence, Chewbacca, and you could. You could fill in the rest. He builds a team, but against all odds, he destroys The Death Star 2016 election.
- [119:28]
Charlie Kirk
Chewbacca is definitely Sebastian Gorka.
- [119:32]
Benny Johnson
I. Sure. Okay, the destroys the Death Star, right? And then at that moment, that's the 2016 election.
- [119:44]
Charlie Kirk
Boom.
- [119:45]
Benny Johnson
Hillary Clinton obliterated. Then the Empire Strikes Back, spying, impeachment convictions, you name it. So I think we're right near the end of episode five. Like, that first Hoth scene where the Empire just goes nuts. That was like the Mueller investigation where it's like, okay, we're getting run out of this thing. Like, how do we go from Death Star to, like, Empire invading entire Iceland with Luke being, like, thrown up and evil monster about to destroy him? You're right.
- [120:20]
Charlie Kirk
And it feels like that right now in America because the empire striking back 2020 hasn't happened. There's so much that's going to happen between now and election day. And at the end of Empire, you see, sort of a broken Hansel has been frozen in carbonite. The team has been broken.
- [120:34]
Benny Johnson
That's what I'm saying.
- [120:35]
Charlie Kirk
Like, Luke has lost his hand. He lost a battle to his dad. He.
- [120:39]
Benny Johnson
Exactly.
- [120:40]
Charlie Kirk
Like everyone. Like, where is the hope? Left.
- [120:42]
Benny Johnson
Right, Exactly. So archetypically, if you look at America's journey right now, that's kind of where we are. We're so disassembled. We're so. We're on defense. I told you that, right. That the left has pushed us on defense at this current moment. And so then in Return of the Jedi, there's that moment of kind of, you find your battle base, right? You kind of reorient your guiding principles, which they do. Why are we fighting? Is it really worth it? Those conversations all happen in Return of the Jedi. Like, why are we here? Is this a suicide mission? Like, what are we doing here? Because they're gonna hunt us all down, right? Like, every single one of us. And then you have a moment where the hero rises up, gives a speech or says something's. Like, nothing could be more important. And to summarize it all together, Trump wins, Luke Skywalker wins, but at great cost and great price, with unsuspecting allies and things rising up that you could never imagine. But again, the same could be said for the Lord of the Rings drama or the Harry Potter drama or any of the great story dramas that we know that are typically in trilogy fashion, if not extended novel fashion, where you have a hero journey. We've talked about this before, but you have the individual that grows up in innocence and goes forth and gets mentored. It's all the same story. But what we have to recognize and realize, what's the one thing in Lord of the Rings struggle, the Harry Potter struggle and the Star wars struggle that all of them recognize that is the greatest threat. It's not the threat external. Frodo realizes it's inside. Same for America. Our greatest threat is within our country. Archetypically, we know that the left, the struggle between the temptation of putting on the ring and saying, yes, I'm going to take the full promises of the left. Maybe they can run the country better than us. Or destroying that ring and throwing it into the fire, or Harry Potter and confronting the great evil, that scar that you have within you. Maybe I should succumb to the temptations of Lord Voldemort. Maybe I should become like them. Or maybe I'm Going to confront it and destroy it. That's hard to do, though. It takes courage. Like Harry Potter in Volume two, where he literally goes down beneath the castle and slays the dragon. Slays the basilisk, which is one of the oldest hero arcs in the history of Western society, where literally. What was the name of the girl he was trying to save? You save the virgin. Her name was Virginia, for goodness sakes. Like J.K. rowling put that perfectly together. Because Harry Potter didn't want to slay the dragon. What happens when you look the dragon in the eyes turns you to stone because you're so, so scared. Literally turns you to stone. And so she put that beautifully in. Just an awesome hero arc. And that's, that's been built into our consciousness. And now as America, we have to recognize and decide China's awful, the Iranians, all that stuff is true. The real confrontation has to be within. Has to be. And our failure to do that will be the demise of our country. But what's so cool is they gave. Our ancestors, gave us these stories for a reason. They gave us. It's not an accident. These stories keep on repeating. It's not an accident that the three most important dramas of our lifetime all have the same story of a young boy that grows up in innocence and goes past that innocence and fights something somewhat quasi mythical, finds out there's more to the story and realizes the real problem is within. Why does that story keep repeating and has popularity like off the charts? It's because we know that there's something there that we have to do. There's a reason why the left wing stories don't resonate. Like what? Harry Potter is going to go become some transgender activist at the local Cambridge Community College and ask for reparations for anyone that grows up beneath the stairs. Like that's an awful story. Doesn't resonate. Or Frodo's gonna collectively bargain the hobbits of capacity against Saruman and say that we Hobbits deserve union membership. Or what? Or is Luke Skywalker and they become some sort of intergalactic community organizer and basically be petitioning for the rights of Tatooine to have no police. That's an awful story. And the reason it's not such as it's not just awful in the way that it's portrayed, but it's awful in a different way. Benny. It's awful because it does not resonate with us on a spiritual level. On a psychological level. See, we as human beings, we use these stories as meta truths and we've built everything we know to be true. And Jordan Peterson said this better than anyone else, is that it's true. Because the stories survived and because they're so unbelievably popular. Because your unconscious is like 98% of your head. So when you're watching these stories, without even realizing, your brain is processing, like, wow, that's the bully in my school. Wow, that's the person I need to confront. That's how our country's gonna survive. We have these stories for a reason.
- [125:17]
Charlie Kirk
Never give up your history.
- [125:20]
Benny Johnson
Well, and that's also part of the hubris of the left. That's also part of the hubris. Like everything before you is wrong. They want. I mean, if you look at what they did in the French Revolution, they started history over at year zero. Robespierre, who was an aristocrat, by the way, who led the French Revolution, said, we're going to redo the calendar. Screw the agrarian calendar. No more of this. We're going to start over at year zero. That's awfully confident of you that everything before you is a mistake. That's what Alexandria Ocasio Cortez believes. Everything before us was a mistake. That's how you get book burning, which is literally what they're doing now. They are getting rid of books that are not written by black women in the academy and in universities. Getting rid of them, destroying them. We have this. We have these stories for a reason. It's time for us to act like heroes. That means courage. You cannot be a hero without being courageous. You cannot.
- [126:09]
Charlie Kirk
America is a good country and it's worth saving and it's worth fighting for.
- [126:14]
Benny Johnson
So fight the greatest country ever to exist. Email us freedom charliekirk.com you can follow Benny Johnson's work at Turning Point USA. Thanks so much for listening, guys. God bless.