2,387 videos 1,376,944,188 views US Joined Aug 30, 2018
Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Charlie Kirk Tells University of Washington Students Why American Values Are Under Attack from Within
Charlie Kirk addresses over a thousand students at the University of Washington, arguing that America's exceptional prosperity stems not from geography or documents, but from a value system rooted in gratitude and Judeo-Christian principles. Kirk contrasts producers with complainers, examines why Seattle's secularism correlates with radical activism, and explains why Gen Z men are becoming the most conservative generation in fifty years. He challenges students to defend any moral framework that has produced more flourishing than the Ten Commandments, while warning that the death of traditional values has created the most depressed, suicidal, and anxious generation in history.
Producers Versus Complainers: A Fundamental Divide
Charlie Kirk opens by drawing a sharp distinction between political orientations based on action versus grievance. Those who complain more than they produce typically align with the left, while those who produce more than they complain gravitate toward the right. This pattern explains why destructive street tactics have become commonplace among certain activist groups.
The true target of these forces isn't Israel or even America itself, but rather the foundational principles that define Western civilization: freedom of speech, the Constitution, and the prosperity these principles generate. This represents a decivilization movement—one that seeks to destroy existing structures without offering clear alternatives.
What Makes America Exceptional
Kirk poses three critical questions to understand American exceptionalism. The answer isn't found in superior founding documents, though America's are impressive. Just ask Liberia, which modeled its constitution after America's yet failed to replicate its success. Natural resources don't explain it either—Russia possesses vast natural resources yet remains one-thirtieth as wealthy as the United States despite being one-third the size.
Population isn't the answer. India has quadruple America's population but a GDP per capita of only $800 per person. Six hundred million Indians lack running water or toilets, down from 750 million but still a staggering number.
What makes America unique is its values. The fundamental American value that every young person needs to hear is that this country isn't nearly as bad as they've been taught—it's actually better than they've ever believed. If you work hard and play by the rules, you can make something magnificent of your life.
The Foundation of Gratitude
At the core of these values lies gratitude. Kirk contrasts the endless protesters screaming at the sky with those who possess genuine thankfulness. Gratitude requires recognizing that you are not the most important thing ever to exist in the history of the world.
Kirk ventures that the majority of his audience believes two critically important things: that there is a God, and you are not Him. These beliefs create the foundation for recognizing that you have somebody or something to be grateful for.
Seattle's Secularism and Radical Activism
Kirk argues it's no coincidence that Seattle, the most atheist city in America, serves as a hotbed for radical activity. While some might dismiss this as mere correlation, Kirk maintains it represents causation. The question isn't whether man fails to believe in God, but rather who or what does he call God.
There is no such thing as a true atheist—only someone who has replaced traditional biblical belief with alternative gods: LGBT ideology, earth worship, anti-racism, or simply the god of protesting out of boredom from smoking weed and playing video games all day.
Seattle's lifestyle more closely resembles a pagan belief system than atheism, complete with symbols, incantations, and parades designed to make participants feel important and part of something larger than themselves.
The Death of God and the Death of the West
Kirk's central thesis is that the death of the ethical monotheistic God—the God of the Bible that the founding fathers acknowledged—represents the death of the West itself. Without a transcendent moral framework, who determines what is good or evil?
If good and evil are merely personal opinions rather than transcendent truths, then all that matters is power. When right and left, up and down, good and evil become subjective, what matters is who issues the opinion.
America's difference stems from a value system that can be called Christian or Western: the belief that there is a God, you are not Him, and that God has commanded you to live a certain way.
The Ten Commandments as Civilizational Foundation
Kirk delivers what he acknowledges is probably the least popular message on a college campus, repeating it for clarity: If you live by the Ten Commandments, your society will flourish. If you do not live by the Ten Commandments, your society will collapse.
The commandments are:
You'll have no other gods before me
You shall not make any graven images
You shall not take the Lord's name in vain
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy
Honor your mother and father so that you may live long in the land
Do not murder
Do not steal
Do not commit adultery
Do not bear false witness
Do not covet
If you live by these commandments and believe that there is a God who issued them—that they are transcendent truths outside of personal opinion—you will act differently. This framework doesn't work for just one people but for all people.
The Catastrophe of Modern Secularism
Kirk warns that we are witnessing the excesses of secularism in the modern era. This generation is the most depressed, suicidal, anxious, and alcohol-addicted in history—a generation told that God is not cool and to pursue their own truth.
The result is a catastrophe of young people searching for meaning who don't know what is right or wrong. When you tear down the God of yesterday and declare you don't need that foundation, you create moral chaos.
Kirk challenges anyone to present a code of conduct that has proven to create a more flourishing, prosperous society than the one he's articulated.
The Conservative Awakening Among Gen Z Men
Despite the cultural challenges, Kirk expresses tremendous encouragement. The University of Washington event couldn't find a room large enough to accommodate all the students who wanted to attend, turning away over a thousand people.
This response reflects a broader trend: Gen Z men are the most conservative they've been in the last fifty years. Young men aged 18, 19, and 20 are sick and tired of being told that every problem in the world exists because of them—that simply being a young man, especially a young white man, requires apologizing when you walk into a room for rape culture and toxic masculinity.
These young men want their country back. They want to own property, get married, have children, and live without fear that saying the wrong thing will bring an HR manager into their office to obliterate their career. They want to say it's a good thing to have men in society—that we need strong men to defeat evil.
There is only one place where this message resonates, and it's certainly not on the American left, where androgynous beta males find a home to complain about their feelings all day long. The ascendant men in this country who are serious about their future and serious about fighting evil are joining the conservative movement in record numbers to build a country worth living in and reject the forces destroying it from within.
