Charlie's First Ever Catholic Church Appearance

Hey everybody, happy Sunday. My first ever conversation at a Catholic Church. I think you'll enjoy it. I love devout Catholics.

So many in my life that I treasure and it's a great conversation. Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com. Subscribe to our podcast and get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com.

That's tpusa.com. Email me as always freedom at charliekirk.com and become a member, members.charliekirk.com. Buckle up everybody. Here we go. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk is 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 countries, destroyed lives and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Thank you, Father. This is a great honor. This is my first time speaking at a Catholic church and so I'm very, very honored by that. Thank you. And you know my favorite question in the VIP is they say, so Charlie, when are you converting? When are you converting? Is it great?

It's always, you know, make disciples of all nations, right? You have a real special father here, I got to tell you. He is doing a really great.

He is doing a great job. And my wife baptized Catholic, my mom baptized Catholic and I think my grandmother was one of the most Catholic people of the last hundred years. Some of my earliest childhood memories was her telling me to stop talking because EWTN was on. And so you guys get that joke. I say that in other people. What is EWT? What?

I don't know what that is. But I have such great respect for, you know, really serious Catholics in so many different ways. And, you know, our team has, you know, a lot of devout Catholics. I'm going to talk just about what we, you know, I as an evangelical and Catholics have in common because I think the unity between us is far greater than people ever realize, especially in the fight for what my day to day work is in the fight for life and the fight for truth in a world that has lost its mind and has gone totally mad. And I want to just emphasize one thing that I think for those of you that are engaged in this space, it's something that especially the last hundred years, the Catholic Church in America has done very well.

And that's the emphasis on education. It's something that evangelicals have done poorly. And I say this all the time to pastors and, you know, people in the Protestant faith. I say, how many, you know, evangelicals can you name that are on the Supreme Court? I can name several Catholics. How can what has happened is that the Catholic Church and so many of you have believed in pouring into the next generation and building institutions and building schools and passing down your values. And that fruit is fighting for truth every single day in America. And I was so blown away by how many people are homeschooling and sending their kids to great Catholic churches.

Just really great. And I am such a admirer of and I say this all the time that the pro-life movement is something I'm very, very enthusiastic for. I'm very outspokenly pro-life, especially when it's now less popular than ever. I'm very pro-life. And if we're honest, it really the Catholic Church has been terrific on this issue in an unwavering way. And so much of the winds that we now see are multiple generations of Catholic activists, of people that prayed the rosary every single day for the reversal of Roe versus Wade.

And honestly, as someone who is a warrior for life and someone who, you know, you might not hear this, I just want to thank those of you that have fought for life for the last couple of decades. Because that and we have the beautiful child right up front. It's one of the most important things.

So I want to touch on some stuff then we can do some questions. And I was, you know, it's very funny. I take this very seriously. I love the Bible. I love the word.

I love to learn. And so when I enter a holy place, I take that with some heaviness. Holy means separate in the scriptures.

And to honor actually is the same Hebrew word as to treat heavily. And, you know, one of the very, very kind gentlemen said, well, Charlie, are you going to be doing similar to what you did at UCLA? I said, well, UCLA is not a holy place.

And so a lot different than coming to a holy Catholic church. And so but yes, I will be taking questions. And if you disagree, you can go to the front of the line as we do at UCLA.

But I'm going to be, let's just say, far more gentle than I even was at UCLA. I also want to shout out a really special person that I just I think I met for the first time just a couple of seconds ago. Jim Caviezel. He is a great person. Is he not?

And stand up. What they tried to do to this man throughout many years and he was faithful and he believed. And for those of you that don't know, and it's OK if you don't, but I'll connect two dots because you'll definitely know this. He was really one of the forces of energy behind the sound of freedom the last year. And he also had one of the toughest acting gigs in the history.

Hey, do you want to play Jesus, Jim? Like, OK, that's and you did a great job. I mean that non sarcastically.

And this guy is faithful and he stuck his neck out. And just what an amazing. And by the way, people say, you know, ask me all the time, Charlie, what gives you hope? You know, what gives me hope is they spent a billion dollars making this insufferable, nauseating Barbie film that makes me just OK.

I won't go too much. And sound of freedom on a shoestring budget. Pure grassroots, no major marketing, no academy support, pure censorship. What did The Guardian call it?

Like a QAnon echo or something, right? It was that sound of freedom was the second most successful film of two thousand twenty three is not not unbelievable. And I truly believe the hand of God was behind that success. But I also believe part of the demand is that it started to connect dots. I think people all of a sudden said, oh, my goodness, I knew that there was something dark and demonic going on.

I knew that they were doing things to children they should not be doing. And in such a dramatic and persuasive and powerful way, that film hit it out of the park. And so, Jim, honored that you're here tonight. Thank you. It really means a lot to me.

So the country's in trouble. We could talk about that with Q&A if you want. But the one thing I definitely want to emphasize. Look, we live in an increasingly secular society.

I was just talking to the father before this. He made such a great point. He said, you know, the country that was around 50 or 60 years ago, we all knew our neighbors by name and we introduced ourselves to one another and we cared about our neighbors. And I'm afraid we're becoming a nation of strangers in more ways than one. And this is one of the reasons why I think what's happening on the southern border is one of the greatest humanitarian crises in the history of the country.

Not just because people are literally being sold into sex slavery and girls are being raped every single day, which is happening in the fentanyl and the drugs. But I'm afraid that you lose that connective tissue that so many of us remember in this country, where if you don't share something in common with your neighbor, or if you feel as if you don't have to be neighborly to your fellow citizen, then you become this kind of harsh and cold, hostile community of strangers. It's not even a community at that point. It just kind of becomes passerby. And we were having this amazing conversation where you knew every neighbor by name and that if for whatever reason, you know, the dad didn't go into work, you'd knock on the door and you'd say, hey, is everything okay? Can I make you a meal?

And now you'd be lucky even if you know your neighbor's name. And I think that is a symptom of what I am dedicating a large portion of my life of, proving that secularism destroys everything it touches. And this is not a popular opinion always to bring, even in the conservative movement at times, because they say, well, Charlie, we can have conservatism without religion or conservatism without a belief in God. To be perfectly honest, I'm not interested in that type of conservatism. I'm not interested in conservatism without a belief in the divine and the transcendent and the beautiful and the eternal. Because then what are you conserving?

How much stuff you can put in your garage, your stock market portfolio? You conserve that which God gave us, which is good and true and beautiful. Conservatism is an outgrowth of our faith, of our belief in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And anyone can be conservative, but they must understand the ancestry of where that came from, which is an understanding of the natural law, understanding that we live in a world that God made that was intelligible that we could discover. And I can point to so many different examples. And again, some people will push back against this and it's fine, probably not here tonight.

But on college campuses they certainly do. Where I believe that one of the reasons we have the most depressed, suicidal, alcohol addicted and drug addicted generations in history is we also have one of the least churched, least religious and least engaged in their faith generations ever. Because when you do not, when you stop believing in God, you don't believe in nothing, you'll believe in anything. I didn't come up with that, I wish I did, it was G.K. Chesterton.

It's too good, I'm sorry, I just am merely a communicator of it. But this is how you get the most insane and silly ideas, such as that men can give birth. And you laugh, but that is the position of the Center for Disease Control.

Only secularism can give you the idiocy and the insanity that we are living through. And it's critical that those of all of us that believe that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, that we connect those dots. It is not enough just to say, well that doesn't make any sense. And that is, why does it not make sense? Because we removed the thing that truly makes sense.

That there's a God that created us and we're here for a purpose and for a reason. That's why it doesn't make sense. All of a sudden people say, well I don't understand, why is it that the people that are always crying about racism, they want black only dormitories? And then when I say that that's segregation, they call me a racist. It's secularism. Or why is it that when I say that we shouldn't teach 12-year-olds pornographic imagery, that I'm called a hater and not a lover of our children? And understand that as we have yielded the terrain and yielded the ground to the people that say they believe in nothing, we have fallen for a false trap.

And this is the most important thing. There's only one thing that you take away tonight from my speech. Is that the people that tell you that they're neutral are anything but neutral. There is no such thing as viewpoint neutrality. So either you are the ones, or we are the ones that administer some sort of a cogent world view that can make sense, or the people that say they're for neutrality end up pushing transgenderism and this garbage that we now see in our schools.

And I'll give you one data point. Even if you are very sympathetic to the alphabet mafia, even if you think that it's a great thing. Can I say that? Is that okay?

Or am I offending people? Is that okay? And I think that that's in the catechism, right?

God created man, God created woman. I think so, right? Well, anyway. Even if you're sympathetic to that, sure. Which is that the forcefulness and the ferocity of what they're pushing it, according to a recent poll, one out of three, nearly 35% of Gen Z self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit. I mean, the thing keeps on going on. It's a laughing stock. And you look at that and you say, well, why is that the case?

Well, first of all, it's a social phenomenon, it's a fad, and it grows like a virus and a contagion. But honestly, it's our fault. It's the faithful people's fault. Because we've believed for quite some time, well, I just want a school where they teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.

How many times have we heard that? There's no such thing. Somebody's viewpoint will eventually be taught on sexuality. Somebody's. The question is whose.

Do you want the viewpoint that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, articulated that built the Western tradition, one that is in harmony with the natural law, or one that they will advertise on the streets of San Francisco? And I think you guys can fill in the blanks of exactly what I mean by that. And it is a false promise, and they've taken advantage of us. And I'll be honest, people are starting to wake up. The amount of broken trust that parents currently feel, where they say, I gave you my child, I trusted you with my kid, and now all of a sudden they're taking hormones or puberty blockers, let's call it what it is.

This is outright child abuse, and people need to go to prison for what they are doing to the children of this country. Period. And it is full spectrum. And I'll close with this, and then we can do some questions. My favorite part of the Bible is the first couple books of Exodus. If you ask any serious Jew tonight is the Shabbat, which is the longest standing celebration of the creation of the world. I believe we as Christians could do a better job of honoring the Shabbat. We could talk about that later, if you so choose. But honoring the creation that God rested for a day, and that we should work for six days, and one day we shall rest, as it says in the Ten Commandments, I think is something that actually nourishes the soul and makes us better versions of ourselves to celebrate the divine.

But that's just a suggestion, we could discuss that. But if you ask any believing Jew, they'll tell you the two most important things in Judaism is the creation and the exodus. And the exodus, properly understood, is very similar to what we're living through right now. In the first book of Exodus, it talks about, and then rose a king over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

Basically the king or the pharaoh who rose over Egypt had no memory of what came before, did not know all the sacrifices, the wisdom, the prudence, the blessing that Joseph gave to the prior king that allowed the Hebrews to multiply into big numbers. That's a great lesson for today, by the way. You could fill it, then rose a millennial generation who did not know George Washington.

Same sort of filler, right? If you don't know your history, you get tyranny. The setup of the book of Exodus, of the captivity of the Jewish people, was because they forgot what prior generations did to make them possible.

It's a perfect connection to today. But it goes on and it's a beautiful story, and it's really the first kind of example we have of outright commandment from what was a God-like figure, Pharaoh, for child sacrifice. And child sacrifice, or child murder, if you will. We must understand this, that child sacrifice and destroying children and manipulating children is not the exception, it is the norm. The Aztecs did it, the Mayans did it, the Egyptians did it, in the Indus River Valley.

And we're doing it today, and it might sound controversial when I say that, but there are more kids being sex trafficked into this country across the southern border in what is now the modern-day North Atlantic slave trade. What do you call Planned Parenthood other than a modern-day equivalent of the spilling of blood that looks exactly what happened in Egypt? But here's what I love about that story, is the Pharaoh says the Jews are multiplying in too much number, and he says get rid of all the firstborn. And he goes to the midwives to the Hebrews, which could have been Egyptian or could have been Hebrew, but we'll put that aside for a second, and he says go kill the firstborn. But they disobeyed, because why? They feared God. Understand, these midwives, the Pharaoh was the closest thing to a God. It was the closest thing that you could come to a deity, but they feared something greater than that Pharaoh, and they refused to throw the firstborn in the Nile. And the Pharaoh says, why didn't you throw the firstborn in the Nile? They gave the worst excuse in the history of ancient literature. Oh, the Hebrew women are so strong that they give birth so quickly, and you know, we don't have time to throw them into the river. And my favorite part of this, it says God dealt well, or he dealt generously with those midwives, and gave them big families. They disobeyed tyranny, they disobeyed the God-like authority, because they loved life, and they loved God more than appeasement of a despot dictator or a tyrant. And it sets up the entire, the entire narrative, because it properly understood Egypt was a death cult. And we are up against a modern equivalent of a death cult.

Now this might be too heavy language for you right now, but start to look around. We worship death in this society, and we reject life. If that was not the case, why are so many people killing themselves, medicating themselves, trying to say I can't wait for the day to be over? So Judaism became centered around the idea that we shall reject Egypt. What is a pyramid? A tomb. The most beautiful thing they built was a tomb to the underworld. When you hear somebody toast in Hebrew, they say l'chaim, to life.

Everything that the Old Testament is built around is a rejection of a death cult that they were trying to escape. And as we try to fight for the most important thing, life, which this republic is founded on, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we must understand that is not agreed upon. When I go to college campuses, and I go so you don't have to, you're welcome. And I mean that, by the way.

I do. And, you know, it's very funny as a side note, somebody said, Charlie, would you like to go on a mission trip to Namibia? And I said, with all due respect, my mission work, my schedule is full. My campus tour is full. It really is mission work, and I love it.

It's great. We could talk about that. But when I go to these college campuses, they're not excited about life or excited about their future. Many of them are sad and broken and heavy because we know what truly gives life.

And that is the promise and the truth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, who lived a perfect life, who came not because we deserved it but because God loved us, died on the cross, and rose from the dead so that we might have eternal life if we accept him as our Lord and Savior. What a beautiful thing for us to be able to spread, and we must do that in every possible way, in the fight for the unborn, in the fight for the child right now that is being preyed upon. There are three types of people. There are protectors of infants, there are infants, and there are predators. And there are always going to be predators out there. And right now, there are predators that are trying to go after children to prescribe them hormone blockers and puberty blockers to make irreversible damage against them.

The question is, will there be a protector of the infant to stand up for them? And do not rely on secular society to do that. It must start in the Church. It must be based in the Church.

And it's foundational because it is not against flesh and blood of which we struggle, but it is principalities of darkness and it's a spiritual war all around us. And I can tell you that I have been so inspired and convicted by Catholics across the country that are the most enthusiastic, that are the most passionate, and I'm honored to link arms with all of you in this fight for life, this fight for the most important and beautiful stuff. Let's do some questions and God bless you guys.

Thank you. Alright, so we're going to do some questions here. You can line up. If you disagree, you go to the front of the line. They asked me to say that. But try to make it a question everybody, not a statement with a question mark. So, alright, yes sir. Charlie L'Chaim, and as a token Jew here, I thank you very much for that introduction. My question to you is, I've watched you a lot.

It's just fantastic. I've read your books. How do you keep your composure when you're on the college campus? Someone pushes my buttons, I go wild.

You know, I can count to three, but that's about it. And I've seen you attacked and you've kept your composure. I want to know if that's something that was innate when you were young or did you have to learn that? Because it's absolutely fascinating to watch you.

Thank you for that. So now I'm going to try to make you a Christian. So, you are begging for it. I'm not naturally that way.

I'm not. I'm impulsive. I have a temper. But in the Scriptures, we learn about the fruits of the Spirit, of the Holy Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. And if it was left to my fleshly broken self, it's not a lot of self-control. But thanks to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, one part of the equal Trinitarian Godhead, I'm able to have self-control that I'm not born with, that is not part of my DNA. And I thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for remaking me and being born again. And I can tell you that as I have taken my faith more seriously and asked for more self-control, it has been given to me. And because if you've seen any of my videos at times, the only explanation could be supernatural for why I don't lose my mind. And I say this as somebody who's the person there.

And hundreds of hours of things that I otherwise would go a little nuts. But I say this non-sarcastically. It's a fruit of the Spirit and glory be to God that I don't lose my temper because I think it's important that I remain a cool call and collected even in the face of adversity. Thank you.

Hello, Charlie. You had said something in an address to a large pastor's group not too long ago. And you got on the subject of transgenderism and the transgender ideology.

And tell me if I'm incorrect. When I was hearing you speak, you got some applause in that room of maybe 500 or 1,000 pastors. And there was also a noticeable silence in there somehow. And I'm asking, am I right that that was a silence of fear? And then as you go along to speaking with the pastor's group these last many months and touching on that subject, where do you think this is headed in the clergy community?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was probably forceful and direct. So it was probably something of the essence of this, which is there are no genders, there are two sexes, and infinite personalities. And the point being is that gender is kind of a new age psychological term that was introduced in the 1960s or 70s.

And we have fallen trapped to this language game where people then lead with gender and they say, well, I could change my gender, when in reality we always used to talk about sex, which is fixed at birth. Now, I probably said something like that, but yes, there is a lot of fear. And the fear is understandable. And I saw this beautiful thing, it says back here, fear not, just believe.

I think I'm paraphrasing that correctly. Which is we as Christians, we can't really pull the fear card because we have hope in Jesus Christ. And 365 times in the scriptures God says, do not be afraid, do not be afraid.

In Joshua 1, 9 it says, be strong and courageous. So some pastors still are afraid, now what are they afraid of? They're afraid of being called bad names, they're afraid of being targeted. I receive daily death threats from the alphabet mafia and the purple haired jihadis that try to come after me and my family. I'm not kidding, I'm not just... What am I supposed to call them? You know, the nice people that show up with weapons? You know, oh, look at these wonderful people, they're trying to kill my family, you know, it's really great.

That's what they are. But let's just be honest, a lot of these people need serious psychological help and they're getting the wrong doses of drugs and they're being told false things. And I mean, in some ways I don't feel sorry for them but I understand they become incredibly belligerent. You have a 16-year-old girl who has antisocial tendencies and is on the autism spectrum disorder spectrum and all of a sudden you're giving her testosterone replacement therapy and benzodiazepines and Zoloft and Prozac and she has to go to sleep with Ambien and she's like up and down and she already has bipolar tendencies.

Don't be shocked when all of a sudden she becomes super violent and starts targeting people and starts saying things that otherwise would not be necessarily rooted in just like rational discussion or chatter. But yes, I do think that it's changing, I think people are finding a new resolve and I think that the transgender issue, like many other issues, they take advantage of our compassion, they take advantage of our generosity, they take advantage of the large heart that America has that largely is a Christian tradition. And I think a lot of us have a heart for the downtrodden and a heart for the people that are suffering. The problem is the way that we handle the suffering is completely wrong and I'll prove it to you. The way that you handle a 15 or 16-year-old that says, well, I think I'm a boy, I think I'm a girl, is not to affirm them. The Scriptures in our faith tells us that the truth will set you free, not the affirmation of your sin will set you free.

That is a major distinction. It is a creation of the modern secular world. It is a fabrication that we should all of a sudden affirm a lifestyle that is outside of God's will for how you two live. That doesn't mean you have to do it in a cruel way, you can do it in a loving way. One of my favorite parts of the book of John is John 8, where the first part is commonly referenced, but the second part is almost never referenced. It was the young woman who was a prostitute and they were going to stone her and Jesus famously walks in and says, let the first, without sin, throw the first stone. They drop the stone, drop the stone. And most people end the story there, but the kicker is the end, where Jesus then goes to the prostitute and says, sin no more.

That's the kicker of the whole story. With love, he says, we are all sinners, do not throw the stone. But then he goes and he says to the prostitute, effectively in modern parlance, cut it out. You're done sinning. That is one of the most pointed directions of actual, from Christ our Lord, speaking to humanity about sinful behavior. And I want you to imagine if you said, sin no more now to people.

They say, who are you to judge? Literally, Jesus Christ our Lord said that. And so where is this headed?

I mean, look, I believe firmly, and this will sound extreme, well, it actually won't sound too extreme because one thing I love about Catholics is you guys understand we're in a spiritual war and that there's an invisible war and a devil who hates us, who lies, steals, cheats and destroys and wants us all dead, which is that it is Lucifer's plan, it is the devil's plan, it is the usurper's plan to advance the transgender agenda in this country. You're able to capture children, you're able to keep parents hostage, you could divide a country, you can create massive fracturing lines. And so what does that look like? Is that we have to fight against this agenda at every single turn with love and truth. And the most loving thing we can do is to get a young person or any person back into biological reality of how God made them.

Not drugs, not surgery, back to how God made you. And the final thing I'll say on this topic, of which as you could tell I'm rather passionate about, is that it's a false promise. Is that you give someone who thinks they're something that they're not, that they actually can become the other thing through surgery and drugs. And they go on a self-destructive campaign thinking that there's light at the end of the tunnel.

And there might be fake victories along the way. Yes, testosterone does make you feel better for a short period of time. Yes, if you get your breasts cut off, then all of a sudden you think you're that other thing. But eventually you realize your DNA is the same, your brain is the same.

It does not change. And then all of a sudden you realize you've been sold a bill of goods and you're irreversibly damaged for the rest of your life. That is not loving. That is cruel. And we must put it to a stop.

Thank you very much. Good evening, Charlie. I read two books a long time ago, Why Johnny Can't Read and Why Johnny Still Can't Read. The National Education Association of the United States. Most of the teachers, and I don't mean any harm to our Catholic teachers here, but most of the teachers are now radical. And how do we fight them? We have children that are in Catholic schools, grammar school, high schools, and we're fighting now.

But how do the rest of the parents fight this? Thank you for the question. So I'm going to just speak candidly. There are exceptions to this, but the Jesuits have become more liberal than Catholic in certain universities that I've visited. And that might offend somebody here. I'm being honest.

I have visited more Catholic colleges than probably you have, and they take their left-wing views more seriously than their Catholicism at Loyola University of Chicago and other Jesuit places I've visited. And if you disagree, we can have a robust debate on that. Now, there is this unclean... I won't go that far. Let me just say this as an outsider because I want to be respectful of everyone in this room. There is a, I think, a theological detour. See?

I'm being nice. That was introduced in the 60s and 70s called liberation theology. Many of you are aware of this. And this is a Marxist application perverting the Scriptures, perverting what Christ our Lord believed in, to try to revolutionize the world via Catholicism to say that it is our mandate to always look at things through social justice, which is another way of saying redistribution, abolition of private property, remaking the Western tradition, and out of that you get cultural Marxism and all this other stuff. I cannot express to you the damage that that is doing both to the country and also, in my opinion, to the Catholic faith. I believe that Marxism destroys everything that it touches, and I'm by no means saying that there should be anything short of compassion and love, but when you start to all of a sudden view the entire world as if Christ's mandate on earth was to try to create a government where we redistribute the property of others and that we take by force from other people, and you try to remake what has been the most prosperous and generous society in the history of the country, which is Western civilization, that is not what Christ believed in at all. And so fighting back against liberation theology, which came largely from South America and made its way into a lot of Jesuit schools in this country, and social justice is very important. But let me also equally brag that some of the most deep and exciting breakthroughs in education are coming through in Catholic classical education schools across the country. And classical education, if you're not aware of it, classical education is how our founders were educated.

It is the belief system that there is good and true and beautiful that we're trying to develop the soul of a human being. We're not just trying to create desk workers or administrative bureaucrats that you study the great works. To Catholics' credit, evangelicals did not do a good job of this, but Catholics will use ancient Greek philosophy and texts to point towards Christ, to point towards the Scriptures. They will take Aristotle seriously, Socrates seriously, Plato seriously. They'll take Aquinas seriously. They'll take Augustine seriously.

They'll use extra biblical texts, I think, in a very remarkably successful way that there is this belief in evangelical circles that if it's not in the Bible, we shouldn't study it and we shouldn't learn it, which is actually not even biblical because it says in Philippians, whatsoever is good, whatever is true, whatever is beautiful, dwell and think on these things. And so to compliment those of you in the space that are teaching young people all the things that are good, true and beautiful, as it says in Philippians 4, then God bless you and I think that's excellent. But if I may say, and be very blunt, that you guys need to wage a war for the moral center of Catholic education because it has taken a disturbing left turn in the last couple decades and especially in the last 10 years and I'll give you an example. Thankfully, it ended up being okay but this was a major fight where I think it's St. Mary's, the sister school of Notre Dame in South Bend, is that right? Where is this huge controversy where they backtracked, thankfully, a Catholic school in South Bend, Indiana entertained allowing biological men to go to this female school. Now, there was such backlash, there was such uproar that even that was too far of a step but don't be surprised everybody, that is what is coming next and my advice always is hold fast to the teachings of the church, hold fast to the scriptures and do not give an inch to a world that hates you.

Do not give an inch to people that are trying to destroy your traditions and destroy your deeply held beliefs and the education space is super important and I would just play offense because the entire kind of social justification for lack of a better term of Catholic education has been a big disappointment. Thank you. Next question.

Hi, Charlie. I have a daughter who's going into college and I just bought your book, College is a Scam. You mentioned Hillsdale College in Michigan is the one college you still believe is the right place to go but you said there was a few others left. What we do to tell our family members, our children with things we don't want to give them away that we raise them in a Christian family with conservative values and they come home and they're not that same person anymore. I've heard that so many times from other friends. So what do we do? Where do we go? I have these new friends in the audience. They just approached me and they said, Charlie, we love you.

Our kids are commies. I said, oh, really? It's true. Where is that couple, by the way? Right here, did I make that up or did you not say that, right?

They will attest to it. And their kid went to UC Santa Barbara and I asked him, I said, where did they go to college? And I remember, really sweet couple. And what I love is they say, and we still bring the heat every Thanksgiving. I said, I just love it. It's great.

I just love it. I will add to the list. Wyoming Catholic College, for those of you that are Catholic, it's a phenomenal school. They do a great job.

They study the classical texts. It's a great book school. It's excellent. It's small, but they do a really great job. Hillsdale is America's greatest college. I don't put my name behind it lightly. Liberty University is also a great school with evangelical school, but they have a pretty serious Catholic community there as well that people don't actually know about. Liberty is excellent. They do a great job. But look, I will say this as kindly as I can. If the events of the last six months have not convinced you that colleges are rotten to the core, that should basically be bankrupted and burned to the ground and remade into something new.

I just... And here's my one thing I will say to answer your question. Yes, you could check out the book, The College Scam, or you just read the text. It's a great book school. You could check out the book, The College Scam, or you just read the title and believe it and don't buy the book. So I always try to make my titles just so good in case someone just buys the book and reads the title. You know, the essence is there.

You could learn why I believe it later on, which is this. Some professors, not all, but some are predators. And I don't mean sexual predators.

There are those two. But I mean intellectual and philosophical predators. And I know that's a tough... That's a heavy statement because you think of them as the best welfare to open your kids' eyes and to walk them through... No, no, no. They look at your kids as opportunities and they prey on your children and they're good at it. They have PhDs. They've been trained in the rhetoric, in the dialogue, in how to lead an 18-year-old to rebel against mom and dad in 30 days. They know the right text to introduce. If you are not well-read in deconstructionism, then don't send your kid to college. Hi, Mr. Crick.

Thank you so much for coming. I'm a senior at St. Augustine Academy, which is a Catholic school, which is actually a classical education school as well. And I'm doing a senior thesis. And my senior thesis kind of involves feminism in a way, but kind of relates to young men like me with Catholic religion. And my senior thesis is Catholic wives and mothers should be able to pursue professional careers without the degradation of the role of the husband. And I think that's really important, at least, because we have all these new opportunities in this modern age. And I think I want to remember what your stance is on the traditional view or even on the new, today's modern age. That's a beautiful question.

Thank you. I'd have to read the thesis. The title is interesting. I would be interested to see if you still believe that in five or ten years. Look, everything in life comes at a cost and a choice. And let me just tell you currently what's happened, and you can think about it whatever you want, right? And I'll just talk about it from a general societal perspective. The vast majority of the consensus in America right now for young women is get married late, if at all, pursue your career, freeze your eggs, go to college, have as much sex as you want, and you're in charge. Think of just kind of boss babe type stuff.

And I know you're not recommending any of that. I'm just saying, let me just kind of tell you. So what has the result of that belief been? The result has been we have more single, early 30-something women than married 30-something women.

We have a generation, millions and millions, of young ladies who went to college, got a college degree, have a good job, they have a big apartment, and it's full of cats. And they are by far the angriest group of people that America has at our disposal. They are bitter, resentful.

They are increasingly not religious at all. So why is that? And let me just tell you, everything at life comes at a cost and a choice. And I get hundreds of these emails every single week of young women in their 30s that are burdened that they were told to prioritize career. Now, your question specifically was about wives and husbands, right, so I'm going to get to that. But I just want to talk more macro that there is huge amount of career regret with young women in America. Now, yes, of course, young women can pursue work, and that's fine.

I'm more of a traditionalist. I have the best wife in the world who's incredibly successful and runs a Bible and 365 ministry and a fashion line. But her first thing is to be a wife and a mom, and she'll tell you... I completely agree. I totally understand. I think it is very important nowadays for women to understand that we are called to be mothers. We, in our natures, we are born with wounds. We should be able to appropriate with a loving husband. That is always our number one stance. No, that's beautiful.

So let me... I was recently introduced to a way to frame this, which is we actually do everything backwards, and we just have to not fight biology. We should instead encourage our young ladies to get married and have kids sooner and then pursue the career once the kids are grown up, not the other way around. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but obviously have kids while you can have the kids, right? And then when you're in your mid-30s or late 30s and you might have a certificate in nursing and your kids are 16, 17, or 18, that's the perfect time to do that. And it actually has... I see it work a lot. And by the way, you have grandkids. By the time you're like 45, which... And then it's like, you know? And so you laugh, but a lot of you are in that situation.

So anyway, that's something to think about. God bless you. That's a beautiful thesis. Thank you.

My name is Jane DeBrielle and I'm running for the Public and Central Committee for District 4. How can you encourage the people in this room to engage in the political process in a way where they don't feel defeated, where they're not good enough, that they're committed to the Constitution and what the Americans bring with them? That's a beautiful question. I love that. It's a great question.

So it's very simple. To despair is a sin. And as a Christian, we despair way too often.

We do. And if there's a takeaway of the book of Numbers, it's God does not put up with despair. I mean, again, the least impressive group of people in the history of ancient texts are the ancient Hebrews. They're constantly complaining and fighting with one another and we don't have enough food and God keeps giving them food and we don't like this food. It's like if God can deliver these people and bring them to a prominent nation, He is the creator of the heavens and the earth because these people were not exactly Alexander the Great or the Roman Empire, right?

They were very unimpressive. By the way, you might say, Charlie, it's anti-Semitic. I'm quoting Dennis Prager, so calm down. So it's true. Dennis Prager says it multiple times on his radio program and so I said, I'm taking that. I love that.

So I'll let Dennis defend me. But why is that important? In the book of Numbers, they despair time and time again and God gets angry. So I think we need to recalibrate our attitude. We're born new by Jesus Christ. We have hope. We have life eternal. We shouldn't be down or despair. We have a great country still despite everything they've thrown at us. Somebody asked me, they said, Charlie, what gives you hope?

And I have a lot of things that give me hope. But there are so many great people still left in this country. I don't know if we're a majority. I don't know. I think we are.

There's no way to actually know. Again, I think we are, but everything's all screwed up, as you well know. I mean, we have unbelievably passionate, dedicated people and I'm not saying other countries don't have that, but there is an exceptional attitude to America that still exists.

There's a remnant that still exists. And so my message to everyone here is to not despair and to organize and be active and be energetic and to do your part, to do your duty. You know, my whole theme in 2024 is this, in Hebrew it's hineni, which means here I am. And it appears every time there's an inflection point in the Scriptures. For example, when God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, he says, here I am. When Samuel was called as a boy, here I am. When Moses was called at the burning bush, it's here I am. It's these places of inflection that means, Lord, use me. I am ready. And I think we all need to kind of have that attitude, which is to pray to God in our private time and say, here I am. What do you want from me? What is my job? And God will reveal that through his Holy Spirit. He will. And I think we all need to pray that prayer, and God will use you as a vessel for his will here on earth.

Thank you very much. So I wanted to know what can young people do to fight back against the culture that worked against us? That's a great question. Joint Turning Point USA would be my first recommendation. I'm very biased. I think Turning Point is the most important organization in the country, especially reaching young people. And we're doing a great job.

And we have thousands of high school and college chapters across the country. And it's just amazing what's happening. You can acknowledge that it's rigged against you. It's rigged against you in many different ways. And I sometimes, every so often, I'll get an email and they'll say, you know, young people are so lazy and all this. I don't like that because there's lazy members of every generation.

And yeah, maybe millennials are lazier and Gen Zs are lazy lazier. Maybe. But maybe.

And I'll say maybe. But there's some superstars in this generation. There are some really amazing young people that have their life together and doing some great stuff. So don't throw out the entire generation. You spend some time around Turning Point USA, I think you'll have a different attitude.

But we also must acknowledge, you know, every so often, I also hear is, you know, why are they always complaining? You know, it was easy to buy a home way back 40, 50 years ago. I hope all of you that are in the baby boomer generation just understand, it's a completely different financial situation for this generation. And I'm not a victim politics guy.

I'm not any of that. But I'm going to be perfectly honest with you that when exactly are they supposed to get the capital at their disposal to afford a down payment on a home that has doubled in value in the last three years, of interest rates that are nearly 7 or 8 percent. Meanwhile, they have student loan debt, medical debt, credit card debt, car loan debt, and they're supposed to just scrap together $35,000 for a down payment on a home that they also have to pay property tax on and maintenance on. I mean, at some point, it gets to the place where the financials don't make any sense. It's creating the most rented generation in history, which is bad. That is bad for our country and it's bad for our politics. It creates angrier people because they're not building equity.

They're not actually getting skin in the game. They're just constantly looking at the world as a utility. It's money in, money out. And so I tend to agree it is kind of rigged, but don't use that as an excuse. And that's what is a difficult thing. It's easy then to say, well, it's rigged, give me free stuff, it's rigged. No, you have to understand that the odds are against you, but you still have a great opportunity to make something of yourself and be the best version of yourself in a country that is less free than the country I grew up in, but there's still an immense amount of opportunity to flourish and be prosperous and be happy and be joyful.

And that's a difficult balance to strike at times because it's very tempting to just complain all the time and just want free stuff because of it. But I do see things are changing, and I'll tell you why. There's a new politics that is being introduced that's not yet manifested of a younger generation on the conservative side that is very outspoken on these issues. Think about the most popular spokespeople on the American right. These are people like Matt Walsh and Michael Noles and Candace Owens. These are people that really understand what's happening in this country.

These are people that are very faithful. They're filled with the spirit, and it is a contrast, if I might say, than just even some of the people that dominate some of the cable television talk shows right now that I find to be insufferable. I can't watch cable TV anymore. Instead, I listen to two- or three-hour podcasting and long-form interviews. I can't listen to just the same five-minute segments. It kills my brain cells at times, right?

I'm sorry if I'm insulting you, but it's just, you know, if you like that stuff. And so I think that there is this rising generation of young conservatives that are really, they're ambitious, we want a better country, we're willing to do something about it, and it's best exhibited by some of the names that I mentioned and also the rise of Turning Point USA. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it. You know, my question is, I'll start with a little preamble, and I'll try to be as concise as possible. We live in a country that is arguably more culturally divided than it ever has been, or at least in the last 160 years. While this is happening concurrently, we have our enemies looming over us in other countries, you know, flouting their authority over us. Our hegemony as the United States of the Great Empire is coming to an end, or at least it appears to be. And so I guess my question for you would be, what do you think the future of this country looks like in the next five years if things continue on the way they are, you know, without this kind of great rise? The collapse. We're not immune to that. If things don't change quickly, the entire civilization is in a collapse. And we are on very fragile footing. And for those of you that follow my show, I don't make predictions like that unless I really believe it.

I'm usually right. We have a Potemkin village economically. You can't have 6 million people come into your country and you don't know who they are and sustain yourself and have another 6 million on top of that, another 10 million on top.

It's not possible. Not to mention what's going on internationally, China and all this. And so I won't stop fighting. I won't give up. I'm not moving to New Zealand any time soon.

The stakes are very, very high. And, you know, there is this belief that I don't love, and I appreciate the attitude, but I don't love, they say, oh, America's been through a lot, nothing can break us. That's just not founded in the natural law. Anything can break. And every possible prerequisite that has broken big in great empires before, we are indulging in.

Massive debts and deficits, open borders, the destruction of connective tissue, which is, you know, we're no longer neighbors, we're a nation of strangers, we're becoming colder and harsher to one another, we no longer protect children like we used to, the moral and societal decay, all those things. It is reversible. Why is it reversible? Because we're doing it to ourselves. And when you're committing suicide, you can stop.

That's why it's reversible. It's not being done to us. We're doing it to ourselves. America is in need of electroshock therapy more than anything else. We're in this suicidal malaise. We're walking towards destroying the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world. It's not like we've been invaded by aliens despite what some of you believe.

I'm kidding. UFO questions drive me crazy, by the way. I'm like, do we don't have enough problems? We've got an open border. Charlie, do you believe in aliens? Yeah, illegal aliens. I mean, come on.

It drives me nuts. We're not under some mass hypnosis. We're doing this every single problem I just mentioned we're doing to ourselves. Therefore, we can correct it. And that is the optimistic message to take away. We can correct it. Hi, Charlie.

Last time I saw you in person. I'm stoked about that. I had a policy thought the other day that I think would give the Republican Party a lot of needed votes, and I just want your opinion on that a lot. So kids that grow up in poverty, statistically they don't get an investment portfolio until decades later.

So my thought is kids in high school who are in poverty, every year they move on to a new grade. We would give them like $500 to invest in an American-only business stock market. However, when they leave high school, they would have $2,000 invested, and the American economy would get an economic boost every year. It's an interesting idea.

It could be good. I will just challenge this, that the problem with poverty is not the lack of stuff. It's bad values. And I know that might sound controversial, but people are not poor because they don't have stuff. They might be temporarily poor because they don't have stuff. But anyone can lift themselves out of poverty in this country if you have a proper value system. And the value system is most important. You might say, Charlie, what is the difference between the rich and the poor, the middle class and the poor? It's delayed gratification.

It's that simple, is that if you decide. Now, your idea might play into that because it's an untouchable stock portfolio, so it might be a good idea. But I just want to make sure we caution ourselves to act as if you give people a bunch of stuff that's going to solve their poverty. There's no example of that ever in the history of the planet. Instead, the value system does. There's a great book by Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, that proves this. He treated 30,000 people in total poverty in the United Kingdom, and he came away saying it's the value system that matters most. What is delayed gratification?

I am going to have a tough day today so that I can have a better day tomorrow. That's what built the West, and people that deny that reality is why they're in poverty and they remain in poverty. And in my personal opinion, it's unloving and it is not Christ-like to act as if just more of other people's stuff is going to lift them out of poverty.

Instead, it is a different worldview and value system to empower them to improve their conditions. Thank you very much. Can I wrap it up? In closing, everybody, this has been so great. If you're not yet subscribed to our podcast, you could do that by opening up your phone. And just such an honor. This was my first Catholic Church. Hopefully it won't be my last, and you guys are being really well led here. God bless you guys. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.