Speeches From the Archive- Charlie’s 2017 Speech at The University of Illinois

00:00:03 Speaker 1: My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start at turning point, you would say, college chapter. Go start at turning point, you say high school chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade, most important decision I ever made in my life, and I encourage you to do the same. Here I am Lord, Use me. Buckle up, everybody, Here we go. The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserved Gold, leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company. I recommend to my family, friends and viewers. I love it. Hello everyone, thank you for coming tonight. I heard there are some characters outside, so that's always fun. So we're gonna We're gonna have some fun tonight. I would love to just talk a little bit about what our organization, Turning Point USA is doing on college campuses across the country, the values that we hold near and dear, some things that I feel personally, and I'll disclaim those before I mentioned them. But also I want to hear questions. I want to hear comments, disagreements, come ready with facts you've been warned, But I want to have some dialogue. I want to hear what's going on on your on campus right here at University of Illinois. But this is these ideas that we're talking about first and foremost, whether you agree or disagree, it's so important to be able to fight for free speech on campus today, which I've been a pretty pretty vocal critic of college campuses if you follow me closely enough, if you look at what's happening at UC Berkeley, Middlebury College speakers such as myself shouted down, you know, stages being stormed. You know, conservative ideas are really having a difficult time being heard on college campuses. But that's why I'm glad to be here tonight in a hopefully very peaceful, respectful environment to discuss these ideas, why we believe them, and hear your your thoughts and your opinions in return. So I'm going to go through a series of these and you can clap, you can boo, you can cheer, you can disagree. There's about eight couple. I only have my personal opinion of some that our organization holds near and dear. So the first one, this is something that Turning Point USA talks a lot about, something that we believe near and dear to our heart. America is the greatest country in the history of the world. Right, very good. So we talked a lot of this, and I'm going to detail why America is the greatest country in the history of the world. First and foremost, it was the first country ever to be founded on an idea, not on a racial background, not on ethnocentrism, not on any sort of lineage, but an idea, an idea, very simple, an idea that we do not get our rights from government, but we get our rights naturally, whether it be from a creator, from God, or from some super supernatural being. So America is the greatest country in the world for couple reasons. Number one, our diversity. I'll talk about that, our economic power, our generosity, and our upward mobility. Let's go one by one, our diversity. You know, I talk a lot about this and people say, Charlie, America is an institutionally racist country, and I respond, yes, we absolutely have a history of racism in this country that's bitter, and we need to fight at every single term. We need to fight it when we see it in the streets, we need to find it, fight it when we see it on TV. Totally agree with that, but I would make a compelling argument that America is actually the least racist country in the world. We're the most ethnically diverse, religiously diverse country in the world. We take more immigrants into our country on a multiple than any other country around the world. The next closest country it takes anywhere near as many immigrants just recently would be Germany, France, Spain, and some of the Western democracies in Europe. Now you talked to some statistics about it. America for the last one hundred, one hundred and fifty years has been a country that has embraced not any sort of national state run religion, not sort of any sort of central ideology, but an idea that you can come here with nothing and you could take risks and you can succeed. So it's because of our diversity, and only in this country. So someone want to name another country where you have leaders in government, in culture, in business that are Asian Americans, African Americans, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, atheist. No other country has that sort of viewpoint diversity, No other country has that sort of religious diversity, and that is something that should be applauded. But it's not just racial diversity, that's ethnic diversity, but it's also ideological diversity. And this country we've always had very vocal debates over political differences, over differences of how to solve ideas. We're an incredibly ideologically diverse country in a geographically diverse country too, whether people in Texas don't always are people in New York and California for some reasons, some bad reasons. So the second one is our economic strength. No other country in the history of the world has been able to deliver the economic output of the United States of America in such a short period of time. And I would argue it's mostly because of our embracing of free enterprise principles and our rejection of socialist ideas. So since our inception in seventeen seventy six, the same year that Adam Smith wrote The Incoury into the Wealth of Nations, we have seen one of the greatest success stories of economics, the greatest success stories of economics in human history. We have seen more people lifted out of poverty, the greatest standard a living increase known to man. And basically every country that's ever succeeded, even marginally, has copied our policies of individual property rights, individual initiative, free enterprise, so on and so forth. We have five percent of the world's population here in this country, five percent of the world's population, yet we create over sixty five percent of the world's wealth. We have seventy five out of one hundred of the world's most valuable companies, and we have the greatest economic output of any engine. As the expression goes, the world goes as America goes, and that's because we have created the largest economic engine. It's not because we have the social programs or that we because we distribute the most amount of goods and services. The reason not because of our population either. India has a billion people as one point three billion people. China has a billion people. We have double the GDP of China. Russia has more natural resources in America. The reason America's the greatest economic country in the history of the world is because still to this day, we're losing it a little bit. We embrace free enterprise. We embrace the idea that you can come here with nothing. In a short period of time, you can work your way up the ladder, what is called the American dream. Some people will disagree with that, but I believe the American dream should be protected. You can come here with nothing, risk everything, and create an amazing amount of wealth for yourself and other people in return. The third reason why America is the greatest country in the history of the world is generosity. And I'm going to break generosity into two different components, generosity domestically and generosity generosity internationally. So America by far is the most generous country in the history of the world by how we give just donations to international relief organizations, how we give to churches, to synagogues, to mosques, to local hospitals voluntarily. Last year, America gave over five hundred and eighty billion dollars voluntarily to charity. To put that in perspective, that's the GDP of about thirteen African countries combined that people gave voluntarily to charity last year. We are, by far, per capita, the most willing to give away our own resources, time, energy, and money a way to causes that we believe in. We're by far the most economically generous, but we're also generous in another way that I think gets widely misrepresented on college campuses and gets widely misrepresented by the medium. We're also generous, and we step up when the world is in me A great example is the Korean War. The Korean War, you saw the march of fatalitarian communism on the Korean Peninsula only, but the United States sent our own men and women to die. Fifty thousand Americans died for the creation of a free society known as South Korea. If it wasn't for our ability to intervene in the Korean Peninsula, we not have seen a free society such as South Korea be created versus a totalitarian state of North Korea. The final reason why America is the greatest country in the history of the world is upward mobility. We still have what I believe is a meritocracy. If you make good decisions in this country, you are almost guaranteed, almost statistically guaranteed, to stay out of institutional and perpetual poverty. Those three decisions are this, to quote my favorite conservative thinker Ben Shapiro, I see some people smiling right there. You know, if you do these three things, you're almost assured to stay out of poverty in this country. Not every country can brag this. The three things are this, graduate from high school, get married before you have kids, and get a job. You do those three things, you're almost assured to stay out of perpetual and institutional poverty in this country. So essentially, we still are a country that embraces this idea of making good choices. That also means that, yeah, if you make bad choices, you're going to live not as good a life. But thankfully, thanks to what I mentioned earlier, being the most generous country in the history of the world, we have the most diverse and deep charitable network to help people that really are at need, whether it be churches, mosques, synagogues, and local community organizations. We are still an upwardly mobile society. I'm afraid we're losing part of that. But there is a reason why there are hundreds of millions of applications to come into this country. There's a reason for that. It's because people around the world still look to America as what Ronald Reagan called the City on the Hill, as the last weak and the last great hope for freedom in this world. And you know what, some people don't embrace that. Some people say, I think, I think we should be more egalitarian, we should be more equal. We'll have a conversation about that if that's the most important thing in the world. There's other countries that embrace that model, I would say rather unsuccessfully. But this country is about being able to start with nothing, achieve your dreams, don't throw rocks at the top of the building, fix the elevator. Being socially and economically mobile is what makes this country unique and great. 00:09:56 Speaker 2: We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries and today I want to point you to their podcast. It's called Culture in Christianity, the Alan Jackson Podcast. What makes it unique is Pastor Allan's biblical perspective. He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're facing today, gender confusion, abortion, immigration, doge Trump in the White House, issues in the church. He doesn't just discuss the problems in every episode, he gives practical things we can do to make a difference. His guests have incredible expertise and powerful testimonies. They've been great friends and now you can hear from Charlie and his own words. 00:10:30 Speaker 1: Each episode will make you recognize the power of your faith and how God can use your life to impact our world today. The Culture in Christianity podcast is informative and encouraging. You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture. You can find out more about Pastor Allen and the ministry at Alan Jackson dot com. Forward slash Charlie So second thing, the constant Ution is the greatest political document ever written in men, What do you men? Good? That? Okay? By men? I could say without getting it too into it too deep of a discussion about this. The Constitution was the first political document institutionalized in government that protected what we like to call natural rights. So we can go through the amendments one by one. But the Founders, as in their absolute and total genius, studied human history. They studied the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the successes of the British Empire. They studied Mets, they studied Mesopotamia, they studied the Ottoman Empire, and they saw some commonalities. They actually saw no matter where you are in the world, certain things do not change. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, that the diffusion of power and representation in government is incredibly important to represent but also that if you give too much power to a centralized government without people having the ability to have a check and balance on that, then you're going to have a big problem. So, of course they designed the three branches of government that we know today, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branch, and each one of them have a check in balance on the other. You can't get in the judicial unless you're originally nominated by the executive and approved by the legislative. The people who are in the who are in the legislative were chosen by all of you in two different capacities, whether it be on the Senate side or the House side, and of course the executive is chosen through an electoral college vote. The Constitution. If you look through the original Bill of Rights, why do the founders put every single one of those amendments in first amendment? Be able to say what you want to say, when you want to say it, as long as it doesn't harm someone else, an absolutely revolutionary concept when they drafted the Constitution, nor the civilization before that protected and enumerated in their political document the ability to express yourself. The second Amendment will get into that in a second under a lot of heat right now, a lot of misrepresentation, look forward to having a discussion on that. But you have to be able to protect your rights, not only protect your rights on an individual basis, put protect your rights against the usurptaitious government, which, if you read history in the last one hundred years, is riddled with governments that get too much power and invade on our rights. The fourth Amendment the ability to not have government invade your stuff without a warrant. They're essentially protect against a two powerful government. Do you see a trend here? Almost all the amendments that they enumerated in the original draft the Constitution was to prevent government from being able to tell us how to live our life, and that's again what makes America so unique. Finally, you can go to the Fifth Amendment, the right to representation and the right to do process, and the tenth Amendment, which is my favorite amendment, which is we actually probably didn't figure out everything. Times are going to change, but we are going to leave the things not enumerated in the Constitution to the people and to the states. It shows the humility and it shows the foresight of the founding fathers to be able to put that in the Constitution. Here's the next one. This will definitely get some response. Free enterprise capitalism is the most moral, effective and assured way to guarantee poverty, elimination, and prosperity for all. I can start to see a couple of people getting a little triggered. I appreciate you silently and respectfully enduring this because I'm a big proponent of being able to hear something and disagree with. So in short, let's define first with free enterprise capitalism is because I think it gets a horrible misrepresentation both by academics and in the medium. So free enterprise Capitalism at its core, is the belief that I can sell what I want to sell, buy what I want to by not without government coercing itself into those transactions. It's the belief that value is traded for value. It's the belief that people get equally richer when trade happens, that trade is a good thing. It's the belief in the price system. It's the belief in profit, and it's the belief in private property rights. It's the three piece price system, private property rights and profit. And you know what ELSEO is a belief and it's the belief and losses that when you take a risk and you lose, you should not be bailed out by government. You should not be incentivized one way or the other. Prices actually matter that prices indicate something to us. If something costs too much or something cost too little, it's either the consumer or the buyer telling us something about that product, and people will make appropriate choices as they see fit. If you look at the World Economic Freedom Index, which I conveniently have with me, you look at the countries with the highest amount of economic freedom by total correlation, I would argue and causation would have the highest round of economic freedom also had the highest GDP per capita. Even the countries that are the self professed socialist experiments of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are on the higher end of economic freedom. As economic freedom continues to deteriorate, you start to see people have less ability to make choices, own property and government decisions. Government make decisions for them. Look no further than the failed socialist experiment of Venezuela just five years ago. That country is being heralded by none other than Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore by the wonderful ability that to provide everyone healthcare. Venezuela now has seven hundred percent inflation. They're eating zoo animals because they're starving in the streets. They're on the brink of civil war. They're anything but democratic or equally represented. That is democratic, socialism and nutshell. They're just about last on the economic freedom index. As you get higher and higher on the ability to preserve people's ability to preserve people's right, I would say to buy what they want to buy and sell what they want to sell, as long as I'm not harming someone else. The base non aggression principle, that is embedded in free market capitalism. It has shown right now, despite what you might think, world poverty is at an all time low. We have never seen world poverty as low as it is today. Less than ten percent of the world's population lives in extreme poverty. Do we have a lot of work to do? Absolutely? 00:16:17 Speaker 2: Yes. 00:16:17 Speaker 1: There's one point three billion people that live in India, six hundred million of them don't have toilets. I'm not saying po I'm not saying poverty is gone. I'm not saying poverty is not an issue. I'm saying the best way to address poverty is not give about give out a munch of money. Not to say we need to have block brands of billions of dollars or third world countries. Instead, have people trade value to people, value for value. Trade is the most assured way to lift the most amount of people out of poverty in the quickest possible way. The next one, Oh, this one's gonna be fun, fun, fun. The gender wage gap is a total and complete Why how about it? So it's I see these takes, If you keep going, if you keep applauding, I love it. So I hear all the time, and I want to be as respectful as I can to those that disagree with me. But there is a movement, the seventy seven cents on the dollar movement. Right, that women earn seventy seven cents on the dollar, then the man makes a man makes, And on its surface, that statistic is not untrue, but incredibly deceiving and not taking into effect how long those women have been in the workplace, education and other work experiences. So breaking it down first and foremost using a more i would say, appropriate economic index, and then actually reciting some statistics that I think will really surprise all of you. It surprised me when I saw so first and foremost. When you take into account men and women equally that started the same major were in the workforce at the same period of time, and had a similar trajectory in their own job, the wage gap nearly disappears. It nearly disappears. In fact, women earn more than men. Let me recite some statistics to you recently graduate women from the ages of twenty two to twenty six in Atlanta, Memphis, New York, and San Diego and Atlanta, women earn twenty one percent more than men under the age of twenty five. In Atlanta and Memphis, women earn twenty percent more than men under the age of thirty. In New York, women earn seventeen percent more than men under the age of twenty eight. In San Diego, women earn fifteen percent more than men under the age of twenty seven. Do you see a trend here that actually, we have more women than ever going to college. Sixty percent of all college graduates are women. That's a good thing. Right, we should applaud that right. Isn't that a good thing? Because of that, we're seeing a near obliteration of this idea that we need a government bureaucracy and a government mandate to eliminate gender based wage discrimination. Look no further than our organization. Turning point USA. I'll use a micro example. No one told me to hire women, No one told me to hire men. Yet we have more women that work for us than men. And the women that work for us earn more than men. What a concept. It's because they're really good at what they do. And women are better than men and certain things, and men are better than women at certain things. Yes, I will say that again, women are better than men at certain things, and men are better than women in certain things, and I think that's an okay thing to say. At the US average found this is a study. You can check it out yourself by NPR. Now, NPR is not exactly a conservative think tank, Folks, Okay, NPR that recent college graduate women earn eight percent more than recent college graduate men as of February first of this last year. So you're seeing the gender wage pay gap absolutely disappear for recent college graduates. In fact, isn't there there is a wage gap in favor of women. I have no problem with that because it's happening in a market based way, because I do believe again that women are better than men at certain professions and will let the market sort it out. As predicted, women will out earn men without government having to mandate it. You might say, Charlie, but what about employers that intentionally discriminate against women. Well, there's actually a law that's already been passed. It was signed in the law by John F. Kennedy in nineteen sixty three, which is illegal to pay a woman or pay a man less work for equal work in for a profession. So if you know an instance where that what's happening, you should report them to the Better Business Bureau or report them to the Department of Labor. What theyre's the statistic and the lie that is built around this is that there is this institutional sexism built in into business, which is wrong. It's false, it's wrong, it's built on bad statistics. You can see women are actually out earning men that are recently graduating college. That is a wage gap, but in the wrong direction. 00:20:23 Speaker 2: We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries and today I want to point you to their podcast. It's called Culture in Christianity, The Alan Jackson Podcast. What makes it unique is Pastor Allan's biblical perspective. He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're facing today, gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge Trump, and the White House issues in the church. He doesn't just discuss the problems in every episode, he gives practical things we can do to make a difference. His guests have incredible expertise and powerful testimonies. They've been great friends and now you can hear from Charlie in his own words. 00:20:56 Speaker 1: Each episode will make you recognize the power of your faith and how God can use your life to impact our world today. The Culture in Christianity podcast is informative and encouraging. You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture. You can find out more about Pastor Allen and the ministry at Alan Jackson dot com. Forward slash Charlie the next one. Oh, this one's going to be too much fun. White privilege is a divisive, data skewed campaign built on wise, how about that white privilege? I love this song white Privilege. Now, while recognizing, of course everyone has a certain element of privilege in your ability to think, your size, your background, income, this idea that every person that has white skin has an institutional advantage and has a thing called white privilege, which I'm sure you've all heard once or twice throughout your college years, is wrong. It's built on bad days, and I think it's incredibly divisive. So I asked someone the other day. They said, you know, white privilege is a horrible thing. White people are much better off than people of minority and color. And so a couple things. First of all that anyone want to guess with the richest sub racial group in America is right now, it's not white people, it's Asian Americans. And that actually goes back to why the Constitution is the greatest political document ever written by man. The Constitution was not written in Korean, Okay, it was written in English. Essentially means that any anyone can succeed in this country. Asian Americans came here mostly fleeing communism and socialism. In the late nineteen thirties early nineteen forties, we did not treat Asian Americans very well. In fact, we should be ashamed of our history of our treatment of Asian Americans in the nineteen forties. We built internment camps, We violated their constitutional rights. Despite all that, they rose past horrible oppression, graduated high school and record rates, built businesses all throughout the West Coast, grew and grew and grew as a portion of the population. They are now the richest per capula, per capita racial group in the country. I have no problem with that at all. I think that's actually a great thing. I think embodies meritocracy, which meant what makes this country so unique and so great. But this idea of white privilege. So I had this discussion the other day, and this might sound a little aggressive, but so apologize in advance. But this guy said, all white people are very privileged. I said, all white people. Do you really want to stand behind that? I said, and I challenged with a couple of statistics which were too easy, that there's twice as many white people living in poverty than black people. But that's not percentage of population, so it's a little bit of a deceiving statistic. Admittedly that black people live in a lot worse poverty conditions per portion of their population. So I even self dismissed that statistic. But I asked, I said a very innocent question. I said, would you consider Jewish people to be white? And he said yes, absolutely. I said, do you think they had a good twentieth century? Do you think they lived they privileged life in the laste hundred years? And he's stammering. And that's the point is that, unfortunately, you know, Jewish people in particular are categorized as white. I wouldn't necessarily think that they have some sort of inherent privilege. In fact, there was an extermination order against them throughout all of Europe. They were drove out of their houses by thousands of miles, and million of them led to their grave. That's not to say that they should get any more preferential treatment in another group. There's been horrible atrocities committed throughout the twentieth century. I wouldn't consider them to be a privileged class. I don't think that they're born with a certain amount of institutional privilege more so than another group. Now, if any of you disagree, I would love to hear that about how you believe there's institutional racism throughout our country and we can have a discussion on that such as like where I started this. I went to high school, decided not to go to college. Self funded an organization, successfully raised ten million dollars in the last two years, employe one hundred and fifty people, became a best selling offer, the youngest speaker at the Republican National Convention. Worked for the successful campaign of President Trump, was a member of the presidential transition team. I think I'm doing okay, But yeah, but was it all because of me? No? But I'm sorry. My father's an architect, my mom's a mental health psychiatrist. I lived an above average privileged life. I raised it from six thousand donors in fifty states, going to different events, different people that found our initiative and our effort Worthwhile I don't receive Koch brother money, because that's a question I could just hear coming out of left of my ear from over there, but it's from patriots across the country that had successful businesses liquid liquidated effectively. They say, here's an effort that's actually mobilizing and educating young people around values that I care about. Was it all because of me? No, people believed in me, people invested in me. But I know a lot of people that went to the same high school I did that grew up with a lot more money, that are bankrupt, have student loans up the wazoo, and are living a pretty less than desirable life. If you want to use me as a poster child for privilege, go ahead. I've made good choices. I've employed over five hundred people in the last five years. I'm proud of that people have jobs because I took a risk. Great, but that's not I think an effective argument to argue institutional privilege. So it's been I think meritocracy exists, and I think I'm an embodying of it, so I appreciate the kind interruption, So thank you. No, it's good, it's good. We'll have questions a little bit. Thank you though. So here's the next one that's kind of aggressive, But actually I think this will get widespread support. College should be only three years, and it is way too expensive. You are all getting ripped off. So there we go. I always get the most amount of clause for that one. Right now, again, I will admit I did not go to college. Seventy percent of Americans did not go to college. The biggest attack I get against me is Charlie, you don't know what you're talking about because you don't have a four year degree. If you are going to encapsulate yourself and only listen to people that have doctorates or master's degrees, then I'm sorry because there's a lot of wisdom and plumber's electricians and mainstream America people that did not go through the four year traditional route. If I had a college degree and I was saying everything I said today, you wouldn't say that. So it completely invalidates any sort of line attack. Say this college as we know it today, both Republicans and Democrats have created a system that benefits the administration, benefits the endowment board, and does not benefit students. Most modernized countries, including Germany, France, Spain, Gracium actually using a Bernie Sanders tactic here talk about Europe. Most modernized countries do college and three years, not four. How many of you took a class that you probably felt was redundant or you didn't want to pay for it, but it was forced upon you almost all of you, right. How many of you had professors that you felt should be fired almost all of you. How many you have had high school teachers you felt should be fired? All this the point being is that it's no longer about individual choice. It's like you must take these four years of school or else you're not going to be successful in the world. So I make the compelling argument that college should be much closer to the German model, which is three years. College should not be about life exploration. It should be about career preparation. College should be about what am I going to get out of this, not because I have to go. The number one question that we ask our high school seniors is not why are you going to college? We ask where are you going to college. We've care we need a cultural expectation to go to college. The national graduation rate from college is fifty nine percent. It's much higher at this nice university, but I means forty one percent of students that enter four year college will not graduate. That tells me we have way too many people going to college and that college is not doing a great job of self selling themselves anyway. College should only be three years. It's way too expensive, subsidized by the federal government. We could talk long, long about that. I can already start to hear complaints and comments on that one. So two more and then we're gonna have a discussion where we bring the microphones in the aisle, and then we're just gonna be able to have question and answer throughout the entire time. This one is my own personal opinion, not that of Turning Point USA. I'm not going to expound on it too much, but if you'd like to challenge me, please go ahead. It might be the most controversial, at least controversial, the greatest agreement or at least agreement. Three words that I believe to be true. God is real. Okay, those are my three days. So I say this for a reason. I find the rise of atheism in this country to be curious and to be something I find to be alarming because I believe that as a culture starts to embrace atheism, not agnosticism. Let me separate the two. I think agnosticism is a perfectly respectable intellectual belief. It means I'm still curious and searching for the truth. The problem with atheism that I personally have is that it's so certain. It's that I have come to the irrefutable conclusion that there is not a God, and that I am atheist. That I believe that there is no God. So I hold the belief that God is real. Whether you're Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jew makes no difference to me. Or you could be agnostic. But I believe firmly that the rise of atheism in this country, and it is rising quickly. I think something like thirteen percent of millennial self identify as atheist, is disturbing and something that I think should be challenged respectfully in a forum such as this finally my favorite one, and then we'll get to questions. Socialism is evil, wrong and in effective and must be stopped at every turn here in the country. So we say socialism sucks and we believe it. Let's define socialism. Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, which people throw at me all the time again have more capitalist tendencies at time at times than the United States despite having a very very high tax rate. They have no national military. I talk more about what I would consider people that go all in for socialism, or countries that are very very low on the World Economic Freedom Index, such a Venezuela such as Argentina, such as Brazil, which is slipping quickly. But you can also look at the failed socialist experiments of Portugal, of Spain, of Italy, of Greece that have bankrupted their country that they have double digit unemployment, near forty percent unemployment, youth unemployment in Spain, and my favorite example, which is Cuba, not my favorite, I shouldn't say one of my favorite examples, which is Cuba, which has wholeheartedly gone all in to the communist tradition and has suppressed human rights for over sixty years, has seen little to no economic progress compared to that what comparable Western countries and is a absolute failed socialist disaster. But even more than that, you look at the body count of those people that have under the guys of socialism. Admittedly, not all of them might have believed in the pure Marxist doctrine as enumerated in the Communist Manifesto, but nevertheless they use socialism as a way to build a movement and as a way to amass incredible amounts of political power rooted in Marxist ideology. The USSR, which unfortunately murdered sixty one million people, mau to the Chinese Communist Party thirty five million people. Some would say Germany, which I would argue was more fascism, but he did use the word socialism in his original term. The National Socialist Workers Party twenty million people. Cambonian communists killed two million people, Vietnamese one million USSR communists unknown throughout the Eastern Eastern Bloc. Grand total last one hundred years that we know of, one hundred and twenty nine million people murdered under the guys of socialism communism. It's a pretty bad body count if you ask me so. Only a socialism evil, but I believe it's ineffective when put into practice, and I think the worst parts of our American political experiment recently have been those that are most socialist in its inclination. Let's talk about the Veterans Administration, which is single pair universal healthcare, governor run doctors. You come in waiting lines, vets dying in record numbers. We spend one hundred and eighty billion dollars a year in the VA, and it has horrible approval ratings. And they're saying that we don't have enough money. They own. They see about a million patients a year. You can do the math. That's a lot of money per patient, right, and you look and calculate it. Through and through where free enterprise and capitalism is allowed to be experimented here domestically and around the world, we have seen an incredible flourishing of success. Socialism is evil, wrong, ineffective and must be stopped here in this country. I remain committed to it, and that's why Bernie Sanders and I get along so well. On Twitter. We have quite a well, it's not really back and forth. It's more just like a one one way diatribe. By the way, I do want to say one thing, a little unexpected, a little, but I appreciate the commitment to allowing me to say my piece. For those of you that disagree with me. That means a lot, and you should have We should all applaud that those us constriged it. So thanks, so I appreciate that. 00:33:13 Speaker 2: For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to Charliekirk dot com