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

Episode Date: February 15, 2026

In this throwback speech from when he wasn't yet 25 years old, Charlie lays out the foundational principles behind his worldview and the mission of Turning Point USA. He makes the case for why America is the greatest and most generous nation in history, and takes on myths like the gender wage gap, white privilege, and the idea that a college degree is the only path to success.   Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You've 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 a turning point USA college chapter. Go start a turning point you would 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 Preserve Gold, the 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 going to 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 mention 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 your campus right here at University of Illinois. But 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 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 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. It's about eight. A 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 about 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 or from God or from some super natural being.

So America is the greatest country in the world for a couple of 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 it every single term. We need to fight it when we see it in the street. 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've talked some statistics about it. America for the last 100, 150 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 can take risks and you can succeed.

So it's because of our diversity. And only in this country, 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. In 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 and a geographically diverse country too.

Whether people in Texas don't always agree with 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 1776, the same year that Adam Smith wrote the inquiry into the wealth of nations, we have seen one of the greatest success stories of economics, the greatest success stories of economics, economics in human history. We have seen more people lifted out of poverty, the greatest standard of 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 5% of the world's population here in this country, 5% of the world's population, yet we create over 65% of the world's wealth. We have 75 out of 100 of the world's most valuable companies. And we have the greatest economic output of any engine,

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 social programs or that we distribute the most amount of goods and services. The reason, not because of our population either, India has a billion people, has 1.3 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 and 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 internationally. So America by far is the most generous country and 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 $580 billion voluntarily to charity. To put that in perspective, that's the GDP of about 13 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 cause 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 media. We're also generous and we step up when the world is in need. A great example is the Korean War. The Korean War, you saw the march of totalitarian 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 on the Korean Peninsula. We have not 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 beacon, last great hope for freedom in this world. And you know what? Some people don't embrace that. Some people say, 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. We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries. And today, I want to point you to their podcast. It's called Culture and Christianity, the Alan Jackson podcast. What makes it unique is Pastor Allen's biblical perspective. He takes the truth from the Bible in a place. 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. 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 and 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 Alanjaxon.com forward slash Charlie.

So the second thing, the Constitution is the greatest political document ever written in men. What do you think? Good, that? Okay. By man, I can say. Without getting 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, 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 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 and 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 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 did 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, we'll 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, but protect your rights against a usurpatious government, which if you read history in the last 100 years, it's 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 too powerful government. Do you see a trend here? Almost all the amendments that they enumerated in the original draft of the Constitution was to prevent government from being able to tell us. 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 due process. And the 10th 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 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 what free enterprise capitalism is, because I think it gets a horrible misrepresentation, both by academics and in the media. So free enterprise capitalism at its core is the belief that I can sell what I want to sell, Why would I want to buy 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 private property rights. It's the three peas. Price system, private property rights, and profit. And you know what else is the belief in?

It's the belief in 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 amount 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 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 to provide everyone health care. Venezuela now has 700% 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 in a nutshell. They're just about last on the economic freedom index. As you get higher and higher on the 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 basic 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 10% of the world's population lives in extreme poverty. Do we have a lot of work to do? Absolutely, yes. There's 1.3 billion people that live in India. 600 million of them don't have toilets. I'm not saying poverty's gone. I'm not saying poverty is not an issue. I'm saying the best way to address poverty is not give out a much of money, not to say we need to have block grants of billions of dollars in 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. Most amount

of people out of poverty in the quickest possible way. The next one, oh, this one's going to be fun, fun, fun. The gender wage gap is a total and complete lie. How about it? So it's, um, I see these statistics. You can keep going. 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 77 cents on the dollar movement, right, that women earn 77 cents. cents on the dollar than 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 studied 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. In fact, women earn more than men. Let me recite some statistics

to you. Recently, college graduate women from the ages of 22 to 26 in Atlanta, Memphis, New York and San Diego. In Atlanta, women earn 21% more than men under the age of 25 in Atlanta. In Memphis, women earn 20% more than men under the age of 30. In New York, women earn 17% more than men under the age of 28. In San Diego, women earn 15% more than men under the age of 27. Do you see a trend here? That actually we have more women than ever going to college. 60% 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, you'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 in 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 U.S. 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 8% more than recent college graduate men as of February 1st of this last year.

So you're seeing the gender wage pay gap absolutely disappear for recent college graduates. In fact, 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 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 1963, 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's happening, you should report them to the Better Business Bureau or report them to the Department of Labor. The statistic and the lie that is built around this is that there is this institutional sexism built in to 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. We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries, and today I want to point you to their podcast. It's called Culture and Christianity, the Alan Jackson podcast.

What makes it unique is Pastor Allen'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. 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 and 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.com forward slash Charlie. The next one. Oh, this one's going to be too much fun. White privilege is a device of data skewed campaign built on lies. How about that? White privilege. I love this one. 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 data, 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 in color. And so a couple things. First of all, anyone want to guess what the richest subracial 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. It was written in English. It essentially means that anyone can succeed in this

country. Asian Americans came here, mostly fleeing communism and socialism in the late 1930s, early 1940s. 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 1940s. We built internment camps. We violated their constitutional rights. Despite all that, they rose past horrible oppression. Graduated high school in 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 capita racial group in the country.

I have no problem with that at all. I think that's actually a great thing. I think it embodies meritocracy, 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, so apologize in advance. But this guy said all white people are very privileged. said, all white people, do you really want to stand behind that? I said, and I challenged with a couple 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 be white? And he said, yes, absolutely. I said, do you think they had a good 20th century?

Do you think they lived, they privileged life in the last hundred years? And he was stammering. And that's the point, is that, unfortunately, 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 drove out of their houses by thousands of miles, and millions of them led to their grave.

That's not to say that they should get any more preferential treatment than any other group. There's been horrible atrocities committed throughout the 20th century. I wouldn't consider them to be a privileged class. I don't think that they're boring with a certain amount of institutional privilege more so than any other 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 $10 million in the last two years, employee 150 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 Did I Was it all because of me? No, it wasn't But I'm sorry? My father's an architect My mom is a mental health psychiatrist I lived in above average privileged life I raised it from 6,000 donors in 50 states

Going to different events Different people that found our initiative And our efforts worthwhile I don't receive coke 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 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 500 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. It's been, I think meritocracy exists and I think I'm in embodiment of it. So I appreciate the kind interruption. So thank you. No, it's good. It's good. We'll have questions in a little bit. Thank you, go. 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 applause for that one, right? Now, again, I will admit, I did not go to college. 70% 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 you're a lot of wisdom. and plumbers, 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 of attack. I will 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, Greece. I'm actually using a Bernie Sanders tactic here, talk about Europe,

Most modernized countries do college in 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 of you 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 created a cultural expectation to go to college. The national graduation rate from college is 59%. It's much higher at this nice university, but that means 41% 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 going to have a discussion where we bring the microphones in the aisle, and then we're just going to 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, or least controversial, the greatest agreement, or 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 13% 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 ineffective, and must be stopped at every turn here in this 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 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 as 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 have double-digit unemployment, near 40 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 60 years, has seen little to no economic progress compared to that of comparable Western countries and is an absolute failed

socialist disaster. But even more than that, you look at the body count of those people that have under the guise 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 61 million people, Mao to the Chinese Communist Party, 35 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, 20 million people. Cambodian communists killed two million people, Vietnamese, one million. USSR, communists,

unknown throughout the Eastern block. Grand total last 100 years that we know of 129 million people murdered under the guise of socialism and communism. It's a pretty bad body count, if you ask me. So not 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-payer universal health care. Government run doctors. You come in, waiting lines. Vets dying in record numbers. We spend a hundred $180 billion a year in the VA, and it has horrible approval ratings, and they're saying

that we don't have enough money. They see about a million patients a year. You can do the math. That's a lot of money per patient, right? And you 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 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 peace. For those of you that disagree with me, that means a lot. And we should all applaud that, those, us, considerate it. I appreciate that. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.