Ep 64 | The Greatest Mission Statement on Earth | Charlie Kirk | The Glenn Beck Podcast

I have to tell you, I love Duke Cannon.

And let me start here.

Most resolutions don't last at the beginning of every year because, oh, it's so hard, and I'm trying to change me, and I got enough.

And well, Duke Cannon Supply Company wants you to consider lower your expectations.

I love this because nobody ever says this.

It's true.

Just take it out a notch.

I mean, relax, okay?

You got a long time to live.

I mean, unless you're a really old man, then maybe you should work a little harder.

But right now, moderate self-improvement.

They're going going to send you a moderate self-improvement box.

It's not a 10-step program, it's a one-step program to achieve a slightly better version of yourself.

It's packed with over 80 bucks of premium American-made grooming goods designed to help you feel, look, and smell just a little better in 2020.

And here's what you get: some of the products: you get the Trench Warfare Dry Ice Body Powder, which uses activated charcoal to deodorize.

You get Bloody Knuckles Hand Repair Balm.

It's unscented, so you don't smell like flowers.

News Anchor 2-in-1 hair wash and their working man's face wash made with vitamin C so you can fight scurvy, I think, and fatigue.

And my favorite, as an alcoholic, their bourbon solid cologne.

It's inspired by the Buffalo Trace distillery and anything that smells like bourbon, I'm in.

Limited time.

Moderate self-improvement box, $84 value.

It's $50 now with free shipping to the lower $48.

Not available apparently in Alaska and Hawaii.

Sorry.

You're going to have to send the dogs out to drag a box up from Canada.

All products are tested by active duty military and 5% of net profits are donated to veteran and active duty military causes.

Duke Cannon.

They pride themselves in making its grooming goods work as hard as you do.

And they're the champion of builders and farmers and everybody.

It's America.

You feel welcome and right at home in Duke Cannon country.

New Year slightly better you.

Visit DukeCannon.com right now.

Use the promo code Beck.

You get 15% off your entire order.

That's DukeCannon.com.

You know, I think one of the biggest lies today is the rap that is given to, you know, 15 to 30-year-olds.

They're all called lazy, self-centered, participation trophy generation.

Gosh, we're all going to be destroyed when they finally take over.

But I don't think that's true.

I mean, I think there are those dirtbags, but that's not the majority, at least the ones I've met.

And today's guest gives me real hope that I'm right on this.

He saw a problem and he didn't wait around for someone else to fix it.

Instead, he inspired high school and college students across the nation to be the voice of freedom.

He's a guy who, when he was a kid, watched my show on television, and by the time he's in high school and then in college, he wants to change the world.

He's somebody who President Trump has called a great warrior and is no stranger to leftist criticism.

He's been called every name in the book for daring to support free speech on college campuses while questioning affirmative action and white privilege.

He is the founder of an organization that was nowhere, didn't even exist just a few years ago.

It's Turning Point USA.

It is the largest, most impressive, and fastest growth youth movement in the country.

Chapters at over 1,500 schools in America.

It's also worldwide now.

Recently, I was invited to speak at their fifth annual Student Action Summit, and what I saw amazed me.

Over 5,000 students attending on their own dime from all across the country and fired up about the truth of America.

But before I took the stage, my guest and I had an opportunity to sit down and we shared what we've gotten wrong, what our country must get right, and the amazing things that happen when people work together and do it.

On this episode of the Glenn Beck podcast, Backstage with Charlie Kirk.

So, Glenn, so great to be sitting down here.

And it's an honor to be able to speak with you.

Yeah, likewise.

Thank you so much.

I grew up listening to you and watching your show with the

blackboard.

Thank you very much.

It was more instructive than you could have ever imagined.

Wow.

That is meaningful.

And you've been right about everything that you predicted.

Not everything.

Wrong about Donald Trump.

Well,

I was talking more back in 2012 or 2013.

But it's really refreshing to hear people yellow say, no, I was wrong about something.

I've been wrong about stuff.

I endorsed Cruz,

and I was behind him.

I think Trump surprised all of us.

Yeah, you know,

I haven't really even talked about this on the air.

I think I maybe have obliquely referenced it recently.

It must have been about six months ago,

the president called me, and we haven't spoken since before the election.

Wow.

And

we always had a friendly relationship, you know, and he, if I was traveling, I would stay at Mar-Lago and he'd be someplace else.

But we haven't spoken to each other since the election.

And he called me up and

I'll never forget my Scottish assistant who was part of the Royal Marines.

He comes in while we're shooting a show and he's off stage and he's like,

the president wants to talk to you

and i said cut stop for a second what he said the president is on the phone and i said the president of what

some university or bolivia yeah i mean he's the president of costco yeah why are you interrupting and he said uh of your country

and uh i said oh

crap and i didn't even know what to do and i strangely said can i can you ask him if I can call him back?

I'm in the middle of shooting a show.

What a stupid thing to say.

And so

he said, Okay, we finished up the show.

I called him back about 30 minutes later.

And

we talked for about a half an hour.

Wow.

And

it was a really,

I wish

more people

knew him and could hear him like that.

because

he started in and he said,

You know, I want to thank you for, you know,

saying some nice things about me.

And

he thought I was taking this a different direction.

And I said, Well, I don't know if you know this, but during, you know, the last election, and he cut me off and he said, Oh, no, I'm very aware of that.

And I said, No, no, no, not that.

I'm clear you are aware of that.

I said, What I said was, I want to be wrong.

I don't think I am,

but I want to be wrong.

And I'm going to judge him.

I'm having to judge him on what I think he's going to do.

Wow.

Now, once he's the president, I get to judge him for what he is doing.

And I said, so there was never any doubt, in my mind at least, that if you did the things that you said you were going to do, I'd be a supporter.

I just didn't think you'd do them.

And,

you know, we talked about Israel.

We talked about trade.

And I said, I strongly disagree.

I bet we spent 15 minutes just on trade.

Wow.

And he did not shy away.

He didn't tell me what I wanted to hear.

We had a real, frank, honest conversation, which

you don't have usually with a politician.

And I think that's what people like about him.

Yes.

Is that he really will tell you what he's thinking.

What the problem is sometimes, and yet the blessing is he is just P.T.

Barnum.

Well, and I'll tell you, you're a great

example that shows the success of his presidency from a conservative worldview, which is there's more people supporting him that are saying, you know what, I was hoping he'd succeed, and he has, and he has been able to deliver results.

What's interesting is

at the time we're recording this, it's just what, day after the impeachment.

And last night the president had a rally up in Michigan.

17% of those who attended were Democrats.

That's right.

And I think there's a lot of people who, you know, I heard Ben Shapiro say the other day,

It's whether you think the president is a killer or a coroner.

These things, the press and everything else, they've been dead for a long time.

Now he's standing over the body saying they're dead.

And the press now and everybody else is saying, look, he killed the press.

No, he didn't.

They killed themselves a long time ago.

So is he a coroner or is he the killer?

Wow.

Half the country,

40%, are convinced that he's the killer.

The other half recognize this stuff has been rotted for a long, long time.

Yes.

Well, and Glenn, you and I both share the belief that America is exceptional.

And it felt that before Donald Trump, and I would make the argument most Republicans who are running for the presidency would not have done what President Trump has done, especially the international TPP, Iran deal.

renegotiating NAFTA.

Those are almost untouchable for both parties.

You can't go there.

But it felt as if there was a management of the decline of America.

And you led the Tea Party movement in 2011.

Those are my words, not yours.

So 2010, 2011, you were a big part of it, and

you were

a very vocal piece of it.

And President Trump, in a lot of different ways, has led the revitalization and has given a lot of Americans hope that they thought that this country could not be turned around.

You know what's really strange?

He has the same thing that Tulsi Gabbard has, and they don't agree on anything.

Basically anything.

You know what I mean?

But Tulsi is a

she's so far out of the mainstream, and she is so far left.

But at no time do I believe she hates America.

I believe she loves America.

We just disagree.

Yes.

And what used to bring us together is that we can disagree, but we have a fundamental understanding that this country is a positive force and you can make it.

Well, I have a working theory about this.

This is why Bernie Sanders

has a group that really appreciates him and follows him, and why even some people on the right will say, oh,

I don't like Bernie Sanders, but I think he really believes what he believes.

I think the new era of politics and the bipartisan cartel that has ruined this ruling class, essentially

a very series of destructive policies that have borrowed too much money and eroded our freedoms and liberties and grew the fourth branch of government.

I think the American people would much prefer someone who's authentic, who says why they believe what they believe, like that conversation you had with with the president on trade, even if you might fundamentally disagree with terrorists to say, I'll deal with that way more than an establishment Republican in a heartbeat.

I made argument after argument, and he tried to dismantle, and I'd go, but wait a minute, Mr.

President, this, blah, blah, blah.

And in the end, he said, I'm just going to shoot straight with you.

I love them.

I love trade barriers.

I love the fact that we can get things from people if we just use our muscle a little bit.

I fundamentally disagree, but I hung up the phone going, at least he told me the truth.

Yes.

He was not pandering to me.

Well, and that's clarity over agreement.

Yes.

Which, and the false agreement that

the bipartisan coalition that has really, like I said, ruined our country in so many ways, not completely, but I find the American people have this yearning and this interest, especially young people, for authenticity in our candidates, and that's been deteriorating.

So I have a question for you.

In 10 years, do you think America will be more or less socialist?

I ask this question of everybody, by the way.

Can I answer with a caveat?

Of course.

If

we continue the spending and if we continue

the erosion of

who we are and the truth, we will be much more socialist.

If we have this

real collapse, an actual depression, people who right now say, I am absolutely against socialism, they will want it to be able to weather that storm.

And I'm afraid that we're on that track.

However, I've been

really

heartened.

I mean, Charlie,

I don't think you know the impact.

You say, oh, Clarence, you made an impact on my life.

Do you realize the impact you're having on the country?

I don't.

I mean, your organization didn't exist five years ago.

It didn't exist.

Tonight I'm talking to 5,000 people and I,

in this place that paid to come across the country, I was on a plane with all kinds of 18 to 24-year-olds yesterday, and I realized

the people you have you remember when I did the thing in Washington DC and restoring honor I do and that's right on the Washington Monument right and I said that that day

somewhere in this crowd

there is maybe he's seven maybe he's 15 I saw that speech yeah somewhere in this crowd is the next George Washington that will feel it right now and

I am so overwhelmed with the people that I have met from your organization and the the people who are coming.

You're raising the next generation.

You are

you and your organization

really responsible for

what I think will be the next great generation,

but also some real sucky ones are going to come out of this group, too.

You know, there's always, there's always, there's always a big government progressive left or right in every group.

I want to talk to you about that because that's a great point and I think the you're starting to see the coming divide on the right

and I have some sympathy with some of the arguments and it's definitely 100% sympathy with the observations of where the the right comes from this but there's a new right movement

where they're okay with using government to trust bust or using government to solve societal cultural problems, banning things, growing government.

This idea of banning porn that's been kicked around.

So

that's part of it.

Right.

So let's talk about it.

I did a whole podcast on that.

I don't know if you've commented on that publicly or not, but this is the coming divide though, Glenn.

I know.

I don't like something.

This is horrible.

This is evil.

It's immoral.

It's a sin.

You are no different than what you're fighting against.

Talk about that.

This is the divide, Glenn.

Right.

By the way, some of the students tonight are going to be looking for that clarity because they're being told, which way do I want to go on this?

Yep.

This is the divide that started with the progressive era.

Woodrow Wilson.

Senator Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Those two believed that the government and a group of experts could decide for everyone else.

Philosopher Kings, yes.

Right.

That's insanity, and that is the exact opposite of what our founders believed.

What our founders believed was, look,

You are going to some people, and I know this because I come from a suicidal family.

I've had two people, my mother and my brother, commit suicide.

So I know it.

Some people's bottom is death, and there is nothing you can do about it.

When people say, oh, that guy was an alcoholic, that star was an alcoholic and depressive.

We should have seen this coming.

Most likely the people in their life did see it coming and they tried to do things.

But until the individual decides to change, nothing will change.

They'll just hide it deeper and deeper and deeper.

And you will cause more strife by trying to force them to sober up, get better, be happy.

You know what I mean?

And

you can't control other people's morality.

You can teach why it's destructive, but you become the fascist when you decide this is immoral and thus I'm going to make sure nobody does it.

There's an argument to be made.

The efficacy of banning it also is questionable.

Black markets pop up.

Look at the drug war.

Sure.

Yeah.

Look at the drug war and look at it, it's not Spain, it's the island.

Or Portugal.

Are you familiar with the market?

They legalized all drugs, basically.

They had the highest addiction rate, I believe, in the world on heroin.

They were losing their entire country.

They are pouring money.

What they decided to do was legalize all of it and then take half of the money they were spending and work on drug programs like AA programs.

Just fund things that work to get people off that.

They've completely healed their country.

I mean, there always be drug problems, but they've healed their country.

We keep going down the same path.

Bad, slap the hand.

Bad, slap the hand.

It doesn't work.

And that's growing on the right, Glenn.

I know it is.

And it's almost,

I don't know the percentage of the progressives started in the Republican side.

Yes.

And

you're seeing it, especially with the issue of tech, tech tyranny, Facebook, Google.

And there's calls on the right now to either trust bust them, where we heard that before,

or and a lot of it is by bad history, by the way, that the trust-busting was almost glamorized from the early 1900s.

And you educated me on this quite well, about really the reality of trust-busting.

It is the one part of capitalism

that I can't come up with a comfortable answer on.

How do you control it when people become so wealthy and so powerful that they can control?

So do we take their money away?

Do we take their control away?

Do we bust them up so they don't have that much?

This country was really built by the railroads.

You know, people say, oh,

look at the Vanderbilts and what they had just because they built the railroad.

The average American has about twice the benefits and lifestyle that the Vanderbilts had back then.

We have a much better life on average and just below average.

And they were the top of Vanderbilt.

And they were top.

No one was even close.

Just ask Anderson Cooper.

No one was even close.

I've actually, I've gone into the private residence of the Breakers.

There's two floors.

Anderson introduced me to the family.

I don't know if you know this.

The Vanderbilts still live in the Breakers.

No, I didn't know that.

Top two floors.

Wow.

Yeah, it's...

Phenomenal.

The attic is nothing but Louis Vuitton steamer trunks that just say Vanderbilt silver, Vanderbilt China.

Okay.

The things that they did was crazy,

but they helped us grow.

The problem was, is they decided themselves that they could control things.

Henry Ford was an awful, he was a socialist.

He was an awful guy.

He believed, I mean, he supported the socialists, the national socialists in Germany.

He believed himself, I'm going to tell my co-worker, my workers what to do.

If you wanted to buy a Ford, you had to come see him

and he would go over your financial records to see if you were even qualified to own.

So these people want to control things.

So how do you square that to a free market skeptic?

I can't square it other than it works itself out.

We are going through what we went through in the late 1800s.

Do you think it's a gilded era almost that we might be going through?

I think think it's

the big, huge houses that are built.

The ostentatious lifestyles.

Yes.

That's going to be the breakers of this century.

Yes.

And it will bust itself up eventually.

Well, the counter-argument, people will say, but no, it took a Teddy Roosevelt to break it up.

No.

That's what someone on the far left or the new right would say.

Here's what Teddy Roosevelt did: he broke up

the

corruption in politics in New York.

You want want to fix this?

You have to make the government so small that there's no one really to bribe.

Okay?

You clean the corruption up.

It's impossible to lobby a government so small that doesn't exist, right?

Why, you know, it was Woodrow Wilson that really started this

lobbying campaign, and they did it in World War I.

And so some people that, and mind you, Glenn, this is a growing intellectual community.

And I respect a lot, I agree with them 100% on a lot of their observations, not always with the conclusions.

They'll say, but that's not achievable.

We're not going to get back to constitutional government.

Why?

They say the fourth branch of government is untouchable, not enough representatives.

What is achievable, though, is broad consensus of trying to use the instruments of power towards a moral good.

And it's not an insignificant amount of people, Glenn, that believe this.

I know.

We cannot become a group of people that

don't understand the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of the minority.

And both of which are

just as bad.

Yes.

Okay.

And

we are a nation of individuals.

You must allow me to fail, and you must allow me to succeed.

You can't.

It's something that,

if I may speak in religious terms, sir.

Sure, I'm a Christian.

All right, so, you know, the war in heaven when

a third of the angels are lost, okay?

And Satan's up there, and he's like,

I'm going to bring all of them back.

I'm going to bring all these people back to you, God.

But you got to give me the credit.

And what was his plan?

To take away choice.

To take away their choice.

They'll do what I say they should do, and then they'll be clean of all sin, and so they can come back.

Wow.

That wasn't the plan that God chose.

God said, no, he'll sacrifice himself.

They must be free to fail.

Wow.

Okay?

This is the same argument that has been going on, if you're a spiritual person, since the beginning of time.

And I've always wondered, up until the last 10 years or so,

how do you stand in front of a group of angels who know who God is

and a third of them are convinced, yeah, God's the bad guy.

How do you do that?

You do that by saying,

you know what he wants?

You know what he wants?

He wants these people to go down there and suffer and hurt and be in pain and stumble and fall.

And some of them won't even make it back.

What kind of dad would do that?

What kind of God would do that?

That's how you get a third of the angels to fall away.

That's what capitalism stops.

They say, capitalists, true capitalists say, you know what?

There are going to be places and people whose heart is so big they want to help.

And we as a society are going to promote the general welfare, meaning we're going to show, we're going to point those people out and say, good job, good job.

Hey, you want help?

Go to them.

And then there's something that is so big that only the government can take care of.

We'll consider that.

But everyone has to be able to fall.

Everyone has to be able to bleed.

Everyone has to be able to succeed because it's about the individual, not the group.

And so well said.

Skeptics will say, but that's doomed to fail because of the law of hierarchies.

So that you'll have so many people in the competence hierarchy that will get so good and will only multiply their wealth and multiply it.

And over time, the mob will be created no matter what.

What is our mission?

It's a more pessimistic way to look at it.

And I'm just saying I believe it.

What is our mission statement?

As a country?

Yeah.

That's how I would articulate it.

Yeah.

Boy, I would go back to the American Trinity, which is liberty, in God we trust, e pluribus unum, which means out of many, one, and also to be able to live free and make choices you see fit as long as they don't hurt somebody else so may i take that and that was that was on that was on right right on the on the on the fly may i take what you just said go ahead and rip it apart

yeah no no no it's right let me restate it a little more eloquently

we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and among these rights life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and governments are instituted among men to protect those rights.

Okay?

That is the greatest mission statement of all time.

Thank you, John Locke.

And everyone says, well, yeah, well, we never achieved it.

Yeah, we haven't.

We haven't.

Do you realize that aspirational statement?

Those founders that wrote that said, I believe man can do this.

That's like John F.

Kennedy.

My father was born in 1926.

And we talked about the moon launch.

And I said, what was that like?

And he said, son, you have no idea.

When I was growing up, we didn't think we could go to the moon.

Nobody even talked about it.

We didn't even think about it.

We didn't even have electricity.

The moon was just there, and we were here.

And there's no way we're ever going to go to the moon.

John F.

Kennedy says, we're going to go to the moon.

We're going to put men on it, and we're going to return them home by the end of this decade.

Everybody thought that's insane.

We did it.

We did it.

Okay.

This is the biggest idea any man has ever had.

Any group of people.

Wow.

What we do is we just say,

we suck.

Instead of saying, wait a minute, we failed, but have you seen the progress over here?

Have you seen this person, this group?

Have you seen what these people have done?

And promote the general welfare and domestic tranquility by saying, Look at how we're advancing as man.

Yes.

Instead, we keep saying, Man sucks, he'll always suck, and he's got to have a big government being big brother to hold him in place.

I'm telling you, that is an evil plan.

And so you come from the place and the opinion that man is broken by nature, original sin.

Every man.

And every man has to start over.

And I hate to oversimplify it, but I think a lot of the American left, because they don't come from a biblical worldview, and they look at things, I believe, in more Platonic terms, and less Aristotelian terms, they believe that it's the structures and the systems, not the man, that is broken.

So they'll make the argument: no, man's actually good, but it's the capitalistic patriarchy and

that man is nothing more than cattle and a group of supermen can philosopher kings

and be the ranchers of those cattle to protect the cattle.

I reject both of those.

Yes.

Every man is put here with everything he needs.

Every man has it in him.

I love Winston Churchill.

Probably the greatest man in the 20th century.

Right.

Unless you're an Indian from India,

then that man is a monster.

A monster.

Kill them all.

Shoot them.

Put them down.

They are not capable of self-rule.

Crush the rebellion.

If you only know him there, he's a monster.

If you only know him in Europe, he's a miracle.

So, Charlie, which one is he?

Somewhere in between.

Yeah.

He's both.

He's both.

Is he the guy he was in

1935?

When he got kicked out of the Navy or the British Navy or whatever.

Yeah.

Is he the guy in 1935?

Or is he the guy in 1945?

Or is he the guy at death?

What matters is, was he better

earlier or better towards death?

He admitted his mistakes by the time he was old.

He said, I was lost.

I didn't think it through.

I had a different view of things.

He was progressing as a human.

And that is the individual responsibility for all of us.

And unless you go through the crucible, unless you are put into the refiner's fire of life, if you are not allowed to succeed, well, then you're not going to be able to fail.

And if you're only allowed to fail because the entire system is failing, you won't know the sweet.

You won't grow.

Yes.

So you have to be able to grow.

Winston Churchill is no different than our country, than you, than me.

We all have a dark side and we all have a light side.

And it's a battle in between.

It's a battle our whole lives.

The idea is for you to understand that there is forgiveness for you.

So thus you should provide forgiveness for others, and you should provide understanding and grace to others because

you know when you do something wrong and nobody will ever forgive you, it just spirals into darkness.

Yes.

And I find

one of the root causes of this, where also progressivism is able to catch hold, is the fastest growing religion in America, which is atheism.

And the rise of atheism, not just agnosticism and not just being deferential, but the committed, I am an atheist and I want to tell the world about it.

I call them evangelical atheists because they evangelize more than evangelical Christians do.

And you've talked about this at length.

There's a direct connection to that to statism.

When you are able to get people not to believe in a higher power, not to believe that natural rights actually come from a creator, well, why not government?

Government then becomes God.

You know, for most of my life, I thought Nietzsche

was sticking his fist up and going, yeah, God is dead.

He didn't say that.

God is dead, paraphrasing.

Now what?

Because man needs a God.

So what are you going to replace him with?

And he was warning, you're replacing him with science.

And God help you with the direction that you're going right now.

And look what happened.

Eugenics into the Holocaust.

All right.

So man has to have a God.

The left,

their God is the planet, global warming, socialism.

Yes.

And if you don't genuflect, when you are told to genuflect, if you don't say the rosary the right way,

You are a part of the problem

and you must be run out of town because you're a heretic.

Yes.

Okay.

It's the same thing.

It's just their God is different than

the invisible guy in the sky.

There is a difference, if I may say,

between atheists.

I know atheists that are not a part of the problem because they're also strong libertarians.

And so they don't want to force it.

on somebody else.

And, you know, my friend Pendillette,

he said to me one time, we were just chatting and he said,

you're a Christian.

I'm like, yeah,

you know that.

He said, well, I know.

I didn't know if you knew that.

And I said, what are you talking about?

He said, you know, you never asked me

what I know about Jesus and to be baptized.

And I said,

well, I figure you're smart enough to know.

And I shouldn't.

He said, but.

Doesn't that

isn't that part of your creed to be able to do it?

And he said, I actually kind of feel bad that you didn't think enough of me.

And I said, I, no, I was actually trying to respect you and not, you know, do that.

And he said, yeah, but it's in your creed to do that.

So I know people that like Penn, who has changed.

When I first met Penn, I asked him, I said,

I just finished a show with him.

This is like 2006.

And I said, hey, next time you're you're in town,

let's get together, have lunch.

And he looked at me.

This is off air.

And he said, are you,

are you kidding?

And I said, no, why?

And he said,

it'd be like me having

lunch with a disease.

You're a Christian.

And I said,

whoa,

yes.

And he said, I would never have a religious person in my house.

It'd be like inviting the plague into my house.

And I said, Penn, boy, I've thought a lot of things about you in my life, but not that you were a bigot.

And he told me later, he got into the elevator and he just kicked himself, but he was angry about 9-11.

And he had grouped all religious people into one ball.

Wow.

And through our friendship, you know, of me just being there and, you know, always being his friend, he changed.

And he is,

he is not preaching the hate and division.

In fact, he's preaching to his atheist friends.

I saw him on stage at the atheist convention saying, don't be what we've always said the worst Christians are to us.

Don't try to run them out of the square.

Just live with one another and respect one another.

I'm afraid that is, that's the minority of atheists, though.

A vast majority of atheists.

And Dennis Prager has the best question about it.

He spoke at the Atheist Convention last.

They've invited him.

And he asked the question, do you hope you're wrong?

And it's a great question to ask Penn, because if you don't hope you're wrong, then you want to be right more than what is good.

Think about it.

We want to be right more than ever having an afterlife, mercy, forgiveness, believing there's a ubiquitous creator behind everything that we know to be true.

I don't think Penn would say he hopes he's wrong.

So he hopes there's nothing.

He wants to just be nothing more than a clump of cells and bacteria.

Yeah, he thinks that that we live a good, decent life now.

Enjoy every second.

Be good every day.

So he thinks this is perfect then.

No, he just thinks make the best out of it.

But he should at least hope there's an afterlife.

Meaning, would you believe the Bible if it's true, Pen?

That's what I would ask.

I have asked him that.

And I've asked a few of my atheist friends.

If I could prove it to you.

which I don't think you can either way.

But there's good evidence to get people close.

Yeah, but within striking distance.

I agree, but faith is required.

Okay, so if I could prove it to you, would you change your mind?

That's the question to ask.

If they say no, if I said no, if they came to you and said, if we could prove that there is no God, I reject that immediately because you can't prove that.

But if you could,

and here's the evidence, Charlie, there is no God,

Would you change your mind?

So we have to answer that the same way.

We'd have to be as open-minded.

Right.

We'd have to.

Knowing that no proof on either side would actually ever do it.

That's correct.

Right.

But, yeah, I am.

I am.

I mean,

I look at my faith.

You know, people are like, you actually believe in that stuff?

You know what?

I'm a recovering alcoholic and even more important, a recovering dirtbag.

I spent a lot of my life being an absolute dirtbag.

And I know what

my will got me, and it got me nowhere except into the center of misery.

And when I went looking for a faith, I went looking for God, I was looking just for something that would make me a happier person, make me nicer, make people,

make me just love people, you know,

and to control the worst urges in me.

I don't care if I have to drink chicken blood.

If it works for me,

celebration.

Celebration.

You know,

if I get to heaven and God is like some big space octopus, and he's like,

you never saw this one coming.

I'd go, no, never thought that, but I guess I have to embrace that.

Sure, absolutely.

So I visit campuses a lot, and we're so thrilled you'll be able to speak to our students.

And the rise of socialism is real, and the destruction of our public education system.

Can't wait.

And so can you give a little bit of a preview, or as this will record indefinitely in perpetuity,

give it, to those that can't be there, give me a question.

I can't give it to you.

And our students look up to you and admire you so much, Ben.

So it's really nice.

And if you could remember my name, I would believe it.

I was saying Glenn Beck.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

Relax.

Okay.

Let me just start on a couple things.

First,

this is an 1830 engraving

of the original Declaration of Independence, the first draft.

Wow.

Okay.

And if you look at it here, you can take that one.

If you look at it, you will see on the sides uh on in the course of human events yeah

and in the on the borders you'll see things like franklin or adams that's like a google doc where franklin went in and said to don't like that line and so he would write franklin or adams do you see that yeah isn't that amazing so i want you to notice that look through

they scratch stuff out here i know

There's a lot different in this draft.

And so this is the first draft.

This is the first

pass.

Right.

And so before it got the king's eyes.

Right.

So before Congress got a hold of it, okay.

This is Franklin, this is Jefferson, then Franklin and Adams going, okay, I kind of like that.

Let's present it to Congress.

They presented it to Congress.

They talked about it.

Now, what does the Declaration of Independence say at the very top?

When in the course of human events?

No, the very top.

Well, I'm going to read this.

Is that okay?

Yeah, go ahead.

A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress.

All right.

So something that did not officially exist.

Right.

But what does the official, the one that

approved?

I don't know.

Unanimous declaration.

Wow.

Okay.

So they started, and Thomas Jefferson said, you have to, do we all agree that if we aren't completely in lock sync,

that the king will find a way to worm himself between us and he'll split us apart one by one and we'll be done.

Wow.

So is everything have to be unanimous, yes or no?

They all voted yes.

Jefferson, you go ride it.

Okay.

So I want you to notice that the only words that are capitalized in that are United States of America.

Okay.

Look at.

This is incredible, by the way.

Look at.

Thank you.

Look at this stuff all day.

Look at that page.

Do you see anything capitalized or printed?

Christian.

And?

Men.

Hmm.

Now, why, why would you notice that that's nowhere else?

It's underlined too.

Yeah, it's nowhere else in the document.

Wow.

He doesn't print anything.

Everything is in cursive.

He doesn't, his handwriting changes at that point.

Okay?

You know what that is?

That's Thomas Jefferson alone at night writing the first draft.

Wow.

And in it, he says,

and the worst usurpation, the worst thing he has done

is this Christian king,

handwritten out,

that's all printed.

That's all caps lock, basically.

Right, and in today's time, right?

He's mocking.

This Christian king

has taken a group of people who never offended him from another part of the world.

Basically criticizing slavery, maybe?

Yeah.

Because they bought and sold.

Right.

Right.

Put them on a boat.

If they survived, he sold capital letters, men, on the open market.

Really important because blacks weren't men.

How could Thomas Jefferson write?

All men are created.

Oh, he knew.

He knew.

That's why in his own zeal,

he capitalized men.

He sells men on the open market.

And now he's taking the people who are trying to free those people.

We have tried over and over and over again, and he blocks us every step of the way.

And now he's telling these people that he'll buy their freedom if he will, if they will kill the people who are trying to set him free.

Wow.

Okay?

Jefferson didn't understand slavery.

The founders didn't include this.

Remember, unanimous declaration.

Two states out of 13, two states said that has to go.

Two out of 13.

So don't tell me we were built by racists that didn't understand.

They understood.

They knew.

And inspired by this document, in 1777, Vermont abolished slavery.

I mean, this document inspired the abolition movement.

It took 30, 40, 50 years.

But

the lie of the left is that we're a racist country from our founding.

Correct.

What else you got here?

Let's see.

I'll show you this.

This is really kind of cool.

This is.

And we only got a couple minutes because then we got a

handwritten.

This is to Caesar Rodney, one of our founders,

written by Thomas Jefferson.

Just read the last couple of lines.

This is incredible.

You might recognize that letter.

I'm not great at reading cursive.

I'm going to confide in you, Glenn.

He says, basically, I see the storm.

The world entire from the calamity threatened.

Yeah, I see storms.

We We are the world.

We are the world's last hope, and its loss will be on our heads.

God help you and preserve you.

I think that might be a Latin phrase at the end.

I mean,

that's Jefferson, one of his more famous lines.

We're the world's last great hope.

Disneyland.

This is the original prospectus for Disneyland.

The world's

hand-colored by Walt.

Which was actually Disney World.

No, this is Disneyland.

California?

Yeah, this is Disneyland.

Okay, was that first in California?

He never saw the Florida one be built.

Is that right?

No.

He died in 45 years.

Yeah, he died in 66, I think, and that was opened in 72.

And Epcot was not supposed to be what Epcot is now.

You know what this is?

Have you ever seen this?

No, but it looks Eastern.

So it looks like, if I had to guess,

a picture of

either, obviously, from 1940s, probably World War II, Japanese, you know.

Japanese.

This American.

Okay.

On the back, it says, we have a new bomb.

So we were letting people know before we dropped the bomb.

Only 70 million of these were dropped.

Leaflets.

Leaflets were dropped from the sky over 11 cities.

These are the cities here.

And Hiroshima and Nagasaki are two of the cities.

And on this, it says, get out of the city.

We have more firepower in one bomb than all the bombs we have already dropped in Europe.

Get out.

Food and water will be scarce.

We are not after you.

We are after your

emperor.

And his imperial ambitions.

Not after you.

Tell me where that is in history.

We don't even know.

Only Israel would do that with the Palestinian Authority.

And they do.

Correct.

I have Lincoln's bloody

collar in here.

I have the torch from the 36 Olympics.

It's going to be a.

But, Glenn, we're just like every other country.

No, we're not.

We are an exceptional country.

You know, we may be on that road.

Walt Disney in 1954,

in the,

I think it was November of 1954, said, I want to build a park

and I'm going to build it in Orange County.

Okay.

And it was an Orange Grove

in the

Mount Anaheim, California.

in the fall of 54.

In July of 55,

it was Disneyland.

It's amazing.

So we are not the nation we used to be.

Now

you'd have to get environmental impact statements.

You'd have to

march in the streets.

No.

Well, Glenn, it's such an honor to be able to speak with you.

Thank you.

It was awesome.

Likewise.

Can't wait to have you speak to our students.

I'm proud to be here.

Thanks for the impact.

I'm proud of you.

Thank you that you've made on my my life.

Thank you.