The Charlie Kirk Show - The Spirit of '76: Remembering America's War Heroes 250 Years Later

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

To mark Memorial Day and 250 years of America, Andrew and Blake dive into American history with a look at the darkest days of the American Revolution. Author Patrick O'Donnell talks about the battles of Brooklyn, Trenton, and Princeton, when unpaid and shoeless American patriots held on when the country was on the brink of total collapse. Then, Hillsdale's Mark Moyar talks about America's 20th Century military, which mobilized to win two world wars but then was led astray during the years of Vietnam. 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.

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Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with noble gold investments at nobelgoldinvestments.com. That is noble goldinvestments.com. All right, happy memorial day to all of you across this beautiful country from sea to shining sea. Blake, I am with you. I think that this, as far as like civic holidays that we celebrate as a country, there is no more important holiday than Memorial Day. Absolutely. Yeah. I think, I think Fourth of July, You get more fireworks out of this one, but I think this is the one that really reminds us what it took to create America, build America, defend America, preserve it.

It's a solemn day. And we celebrate it with parades and things like that. But there's also, earlier today, you probably saw the wreath laying at Arlington National Cemetery. It's a, it's a somber day. It's a day to reflect on those who paid the ultimate price for our nation. and, you know, we're grateful, and we're grateful to be with you guys. And, you know, we thought we'd mix it up, but we wanted to have longer forum conversations today. Not focus as much on the breaking news, but focus on our country.

I think today is really the kickoff of America 250. Of course, we had the rededicate event in D.C. where we're rededicating the nation to our faith and providence and all of those things, and that we would pray that Jesus would continue guiding this country. into the future and that's important but memorial day is really the kickoff so here we go uh blake why don't you welcome our guest here all righty well we want to remember of course i think this is especially important 250 years we look back on how do we get here 250 years ago and of course we had to win our independence we had to battle against the most powerful country in the world at the time to win that

independence. So we thought we should speak to a historian of that conflict, the American Revolutionary War. And so, and it's also a person who's a, who's a friend of mine. We played in the same war game club in Washington, D.C. So we are joined by Patrick O'Donnell. He is a Revolutionary War historian, author of Revolutionary Snipers, of Washington's Immortals, numerous other books. Patrick, and stuff on the Civil War. Patrick, welcome to the show. It's great to be here again. It was with Charlie Kirk in 2024 that we discussed the unbankished. It was one of my favorite interviews. Yeah, I remember that, actually.

And it was a fascinating conversation. And people should go check it out because guess what? We have all of the old catalog with Charlie available on podcast. So, yeah, 2020. When did you release that book? So they can approximate it. It was in May, 2024. May, 2024.

So please do check. Yeah, best selling book. Yeah, awesome. Well, let's go back. So we say 250th. Yes. But, and we talked about this recently, it's really almost like 200. You have to go back almost 230, 230 years when you're understanding the revolution.

And really farther back than that, because the colonies governed themselves for 150 years before that, you know, and they created a whole culture. You think 150 years, that's a long time to develop a culture and develop, you know, rules and norms and ways of governing oneself as a colonies. But take us back, maybe Patrick, in the lead-up, here's a trivia question. Who is the first American colonialist to die in what would become the revolution? It depends on where you want to go with that, because the revolution begins in the mid-1860s. And it begins 1760s. It begins with the Stamp Act. And it's here that the colonies go into economic rebellion against the greatest empire of the time, you know, in existence, which was the British, the crown.

And they wield enormous economic power by boycotting British goods. I mean, the real takeaway and why this is important today is the founders understood dependence. And if you are dependent on another nation for your livelihood or for the goods that you have in your supply chain, you don't really have any freedom at all. And that applies today with China and other places. But one of the great aspects of the American Revolution is the non-importation exportation agreement, which was an extension of what they initially did during the Stamp Act. But it begins in 1774. But the Revolutionary War is first about economics, but then it's about really ideas. And the most important ideas in world history are really founded from the American Revolution.

The ideas of liberty and freedom, which will shake empires to the core and break them down. And it begins in the 1770s. And really 1773 and 74, there's a massive. It's here that the political revolution is really kind of comes to being. And it's in 1774, though, in September, on September 1st, if you're familiar with Somerville, Massachusetts, it's right in Cambridge, right outside of Boston, there's what looks like to be an old windmill there. And that is the old powder magazine that the columnist has. that in 1774. And this is where the kinetic

revolutionary war really begins. Its General Gage conducts a covert operation to take 200 half-casts of black powder away from that magazine. The rate is successful. What happens next is 10,000 people from the colonies armed to the teeth in most cases descend on Boston Common in protest.

and why do they do that? Because they're about to be disarmed. It doesn't matter how great your revolutionary ideas are. If you have no weapons, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's something that's the lesson it's being learned in Iran right now. And that's exactly what the British plan to do. They plan to disarm the colonies. And they did it because they knew that black powder was scarce.

There were weapons laying around from the French and Indian War, but there was hardly any black powder. And it was because production within the colonies had been outsourced to India at the time because it was cheaper. But they're also royal bands on black powder to keep the colonies in check. But it's the beginning of these raids that will culminate in Lexington and Concord that will begin the actual revolutionary war. And you got that Boston Massacre. That was a little before that. But I guess we have a minute to break here.

But if you were to ask one of those men who descended on Boston Common or who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, the guys who first joined General Washington's army, and you asked them, even before the Declaration of Independence, what do you think they would have said, why had they joined this army? What were they fighting for? They were fighting for America. They were fighting for their liberties and freedom. and revolutionary snipers, which I just finished, is a trilogy of three books on the American Revolutionary, where I've spent 16 years of my life writing 14 books, and three of these books are on the American Revolution.

They're specifically on elite units in the American Revolution. The Marylanders, the Marble Headers, which were part of the original at Lexington and Concord, but born the Navy and also rode Washington across the door, and revolutionary starry. It's here in 1774, that's really kind of the precursor of the Declaration of Independence

is something called the Fort Gower resolves where these men had just fought against a massive Native American army and won. And it's here that they declare their allegiance to the crown, but with a big butt. It's about American liberty and freedom,

and they were willing to fight for it. Incredible thing. So again, we're talking about 250 years back is, of course, the year of the Declaration of Independence, but it's also, I think a lot of people are aware, it's the year of the great, kind of the greatest crisis of the American Revolution. I think 76 is the year where we come closest to losing the whole thing. Can you paint that picture for us? What was the military situation like 250 years ago? I know this is a big part of Washington's Immortals, for example, is. That's the Maryland Line Regiment that basically saves America, the American cause from being annihilated. Paint that picture for us. You're absolutely right. 1776 is a great turning point, but it was also the origins of one of the great crisis periods in American history where everything could have been lost. And there were several key inflection points where this occurs. The three books that I've written are on elite units that are that, that, that, that, that,

touch upon these inflection points. And it's their individual agency that saves the war in Washington's Army. But the first great inflection point is at the Battle of Brooklyn. And this begins on the night of August 26, 27, 1776, where the greatest land battle up until that point begins where the British land in Brooklyn Long Island, and they outflank Washington's army. And it's here that, you know, everything could be lost. If 10,000 troops of the Continental Army are surrounded and annihilated and Washington is captured, the war is likely over.

But it's the efforts of the men in the three books I've written, especially beginning with the Maryland Line and Washington's Immortals, where there's an epic rearguard action near a stone house where they charge three times with fixed bayonets, they sacrifice themselves to open a hole in the British lines that allows the remainder of Washington's army to escape to the fortifications in Brooklyn Heights. And it's here that Washington has a great decision to make.

Does he stay in fight or does he retreat? And a massive hailstorm comes in, a nor'easter, and it's in, you know, a mansion in Brooklyn Heights at the three chimneys where he decides, he has a council of horror, and he decides to evacuate Brooklyn. And it's on the shoulders of the indispensable men from Marblehead that they escape.

And this is the American Dunkirk. This is an incredible story. They gather all the small boats that they can. They only have literally hours to gather these boats and gather 9,500 Americans, put them in the boats and then crossed the East River over to Manhattan. But oh, they got to do it in the middle of a, you know, a giant 20,000 men, Hession and British Army in their front and the Royal Navy in the East River behind them. And they somehow have to do it. And initially, none of it goes well at all. The winds are not favoring them.

And suddenly the winds change, but it's on the backs of the greatest sailors in the Continental Army, the Marblehead Men of the 14th Regiment and John Glover, that they are somehow able to get across. And it's, this is a race against time, Blake and Andrew. They have to ferry the army across nearly a dozen times back and forth. And it's a race against time because dawn is coming and with it, you know, visibility. and the entire the small fleet of small boats conducting this American Dunker are about to be blown to smithereens by the Royal Navy. But it's here that God's hand, you know, shows itself in a fog,

miraculously at the right time at around 5.30 a.m. comes in and screens the movement of the rest of John Glover's boats. General Washington and the riflemen from American's night. are in that rear guard. They're the last men on the boats, but they make it across in one of the greatest evacuations in military history. It's really incredible. You think of everything that's ever happened in American history. Emancipation Proclamation, winning World War II, landing on the moon, everything we've invented, the right flyer. And it's all resting on these men who maybe, I don't even know if they've heard the text of the Declaration of Independence yet. It's only about a month old.

their surround it. It's an incredible thing. I looked up while you were describing it since it's in Brooklyn. If you want to go, if you're in that area, the scene where this all happened, it's in Prospect Park of Brooklyn. That's where the monument to the battle itself is. And of course, it's the waterways nearby that they would have been fleeing across. I love the way you describe that, Patrick, the American Dunkirk. I think that's like, for our modern context, that really brings it home. It's the American Thermopy where the Marylanders make this epic stand. And I will add that the men of the Maryland 400, most of them have never, 256 men have vanished to history.

It is very likely that there is a mass grave in Brooklyn of their bodies and their sacrifice to this day. Many of them that were also captured and they may have been on, you know, floating concentration camps in New York Harbor and just tossed overboard like bags of trash, their bones. So this is, you know, a story of epic sacrifice. It's a fitting story for Memorial Day. Because if it hadn't been their sacrifice, an hour, as one historian at the time said, an hour more precious in our history than any other, we would not be here today. But that I will add is only one disastrous defeat in 1776.

It was one after the other. How much are life liberty in the pursuit of happiness worth to you? This is the question America's founders had to answer. You see, for more than 150 years, America's 13 colonies governed themselves until Britain declared they had no right to self-rule. So ordinary people had to make extraordinary choices and risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight for independence. And against all odds, they won. And in victory, they built one of the most stable and lasting republics in human history. Now, experience the American Revolution like never before, thanks to our friends at Hillsdale College.

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We just covered the Battle of Brooklyn Heights and the Escape, the American Dunkirk. Yeah. I don't know if there's another crisis that happens between. between this, but why don't you take us to the story? We know how the year ends, and I know this is also, it's the cover of the indispensable's. Another great crisis, the Washington's crossing of the Delaware to end the year of our independence. Absolutely, Blake. I mean, after the Battle of Brooklyn, the British land in Manhattan, and it's, there's a, it's punctuated by a few victories. For instance, at Harlem Heights, there's a victory over British regular

soldiers, some of the elite units. the men of the riflemen that actually deal that defeat on the British as well as they stop a landing where 25 riflemen armed with the Pennsylvania Long Rifle, which was the sniper rifle of its day. It was path-breaking technology. They stop an entire British invasion at Throg's neck. But really after that, it's one disaster after another. And Washington's army of 20,000 is in full retreat across Manhattan up through White Plains. They then cross. the Hudson River, and they're going into New Jersey and they're trying as quickly as they can to get to the Delaware River and across it to the friendly farms of Pennsylvania and hopefully

safety. But it's at this time. There's massive hyperinflation. The army of 20,000 is crumbling because the enlistments are expiring at the end of the year. Washington's army is reduced to you know, 5,000 or so. And it's here that, you know, it's the great crisis point. Washington knows if he doesn't conduct a counteroffensive that changes the course of things, all will be lost. And it's at Trenton that he plans really one of the greatest counteroffensives, one of the great battles in American history that will change the tide of the Revolutionary War. And it's a dangerous and hazardous thing because the, the British and their their their their their their their allies the Hessions are outposted across

New Jersey and he chooses Trenton which is one of the more vulnerable outposts but it's manned by the Heshen lion uh colonel raw who's one of their best commanders um but like the battle of Brooklyn they have to cross a river and um you know they have to do it secretly because if the plan is is known um the the entire thing can be blown when indeed the British intelligence did pick up that the Washington was coming. But it's a Nor'easter that once again comes in to play. And it's once again that Washington asked John Glover if he can take the army across. And he said, don't worry about it. My boys can handle it. There were three prongs of the attack on Trenton. Two of them failed. It was only the men of the

Marblehead Regiment that got the Army across because the tides in the Delaware River were such that there was floating chunks of ice. There was a massive Nor'easter. Snow was coming down. It was impassable to anybody but the most experienced seafarers of the Marblehead Regiment. And they make it across and they attack Trenton at dawn. They're behind schedule. But they surprised the garrison, they were not, it's like in all the storybooks out there, these guys were not drunk and idle. They were actually sleeping in their uniforms with their muskets in hand and ready for the American attack. In fact, British intelligence actually tipped them off. And I get into the indispensables as well as revolutionary snipers, which comes out in November,

and Washington's Immortals on how that intelligence was relayed, but a earlier raid as well, as the nor'easter sort of convinced Raul that it probably already occurred. And he wasn't as alert as he should have been. And they attack. And it's a sniper's rifle that will take down and mortally wound Johann Raul and will swing the course of the battle. But this is just 10 days in crucial American history in three battles, which will change the course of world history.

And it's all part of Washington's counteroffensive. at Trenton. And then there's a second Battle of Trenton, which hardly anybody's ever heard about it. It's a great inflection point as well. And a key bridge had to be held and the Continentals were across something called Assampeake Creek on the other side of Trenton

and had the bridge fallen. The Army would have been ripped apart and destroyed just like the Battle of Brooklyn. But Washington escapes. They held the bridge against all lives. The riflemen literally delay them for about

six or seven hours chewing up precious daylight as they're on their way to the bridge and then they hold the bridge against all odds. Washington himself is at the rail of the bridge, you know, leading his men. I mean, that's how just the leadership is striking across the board from enlisted men to General Washington himself. And then they win the surprise battle at Princeton and change the course of history. It's about agency. It's about individuals that will change in shape and bend history. Yeah. So ordinary continental soldiers. Yeah, this is what's interesting to me. Citizen soldiers. Yeah. This is what's interesting to me, Patrick, is that you've got 13 colonies, right?

I understand a lot of this is happening in New Jersey and, you know, Massachusetts, New York. So it was up north mostly in this particular season. But you've got, because, I don't think a lot of people realize nowadays how much, if you were a colonialist, you identified with your state versus Americans, being an American at this point, right? What was holding them together in these dark days? Like, how did they keep going after defeat, defeat, defeat, especially understanding that the British force was so formidable and was, you know, the greatest force militarily in the world at that point?

It's what's so remarkable is that it's small groups of individuals that will hold the army together in its greatest times of stress. And the American Revolution was an insurgency. It was our first civil war because not everybody was on board at all with the Revolutionary War. And they would jump sides back and forth. And it was also a conventional war against the greatest power at the time. And, you know, I'll never forget. I asked a member of Darby's Rangers. I've interviewed 4,000 World War II veterans.

And, you know, throughout the course of my, I've been writing for 27 years full time, and I've been interviewing people for the last 40 years or more. And I asked them, are you the greatest generation? And he said to me straight up, he said, Patrick, what about the boys of 77 and 76? He said, the men of the cause, the men that believed in the Revolutionary War. and he is absolutely right, the greatest generation is this generation, because they not only fought the greatest empire of the time, but also anybody's greatest enemy, and that would be fellow Americans.

And they also forged the ideals and ideas of the American Revolution that would change history and continues to change history. And it's these ideals and parts of our founding that I think are so important now as we're going through great change as well. And it's so important to look back at her founding. And it's probably what's going to say. So they were, you know, Blake asked the question, you know, what were they fighting for, right? Obviously, there was the stamp acts and the intolerables and there was all these things that were circulating.

But again, this sense of home and their identity, like, when did Americans start thinking of themselves as Americans? It begins prior to the Revolutionary War. It begins in that period of, you know, over 150 years where they were self-governing and they were determining their independence. And it forms over time of this identity of being an American. And what you have is at the very beginning of the American Revolution, there's a sense that perhaps the king, who many of them still pledge allegiance to, can somehow resolve their grievances. But they start to move away and closer and closer to full independence. And as you alluded to at the beginning, a series of atrocities, you know, beginning with, you go back to the 1760s and beyond where the Royal Navy is impressing, kidnapping Americans from places like Marblehead. And it's a lifetime of service in the Royal Navy.

They never come home to their families or they're killed on board ships. or the Boston Massacre, you know, these are things that will crystallize the American resolve of the American Revolution and the American identity. And this is where people will put their lives and their fortunes on the line for a country that had yet to be born, which is really remarkable. Yeah, I think that's one of the most interesting. I mean, just to give you sort of a sense, let's just, you know, we look at modern combat where people are well paid and they're well equipped. These men of the pause in 76, many of them were shoeless. Literally, their trails of blood as they went to the boats at Trenton would mark the Army's march to Trenton.

they had poor clothes frostbite was rampant um they were not paid Blake I'll throw it to you uh we've we've absorbed a lot of content here so I want to make sure that your your brain is reflected

we I mean we've just jumped around uh all over this the revolutionary war we wanted to really remember it because sometimes I feel it feels odd sometimes it's a forgotten war we have a lot of World War two stuff we have a lot of Civil War stuff Memorial Day itself was born out of the Civil War. But this is the war that actually could have extinguished America.

We've just seen it came very close to doing so. I want to talk about something. Charlie thought a lot about leadership. We've mentioned General Washington repeatedly throughout this. Patrick, can you create a sketch of George Washington as a leader? What set him apart? How is he holding this army together? How is he becoming the man who,

would become the father of this country. George Washington is the indispensable man of the Revolutionary War. It's his leadership that is priceless and indispensable in making things happen because he understands the concepts of liberty and freedom and how those need to translate not only in the halls of Congress, but also on the battlefield. And things like treating prisoners properly, these things transcend the halls of Congress and the battlefield

and they become part of the American way of war. But he understands diplomacy. He's the first general since General Pershing really to have to interact with an ally. I mean, after the Battle of Saratoga, the French come in the war as well as Spanish later on. And it's this understanding of diplomacy and working with allies that he's able to coordinate that.

But he's also dealing with the politics, of the day, and it's as ruthless in many ways as they is what it is today, where you have people that are that are in the Civil War, that are, that are hardcore loyalists, but you also have people on the Patriot side that you've got a, I mean, you've got a full spectrum. Everybody from a Benedict Arnold, who's a great general at the very beginning of the war, to an amazing, to a traitor, a full-blown trader at the end of the war, to people that are just backbiting Washington buying it for his position, you know, through all of that. And through, you know, not having his men paid or poorly equipped and everything else, he holds the army together.

The thing is, I would point out that the books that I've written, the three books, you know, Washington's, the indispensable, Washington's and mortals, and now revolutionary snipers, this is about the men of the line, the privates, the corporals, the sergeants that really hold the army together in their resilience. And to gain their stories, I tapped in the great oral history archive of the American Revolution that until Washington's immortals had ever hardly been touched. And that was the pension application files that if you were a surviving member of the Revolutionary War, you could go down under oath and swear to a judge what you saw and did. And in some cases, these are the first person accounts. and they can be very graphic of what, you know, these men saw and did. And those are the stories that are imbued in the nonfiction that I write that many people have said reads like fiction.

But there's over, you know, a thousand end notes of primary sources that buttress the stories that are a band of brothers. I wrote the first band of brothers, Washington's Immortals on the American Revolution. It's a very cohesive story about this small group of men through their personal agency. really changed the course of the war. You know, we talk about what was the greatest generation, and that World War II vet pointed back to the boys of 76 and 77. What was it? And I think this is good for modern Americans to look back on,

because, you know, we're not raised the same as they were there. We're not all working the farms. But, you know, what was it about them that set them apart in the whole sea of humanity and all of history what made them special? What was imbued in their character that made them able to achieve so much? Revolutionary snipers in particular

kind of is a throwback to rugged individualism. And what I mean by that is individuals that lived on the frontier. And the frontier is the Appalachian Mountains and beyond. Some of them that lived illegally. And they had to not only contend with hostile Native Americans,

which were there to, to burn out their houses. And many of these men, their families were executed by Native Americans. And in some cases, they were Native Americans that were allied to the crown. I mean, but the story has nuance where Native Americans also fought with us. But it's that regular individual of dealing with the elements, dealing with massive uncertainty in their lives. But somehow they have to forge not only a life survival, but they forge a nation. And it's this, you know, collective effort, this rugged individualism, this resilience, this belief in freedom and liberty, which is these are, this is a time of, you know, the great kings and empires where you were swearing allegiance to the ground. This is where subjects become citizens. It's a very, very important time. I think that is, I think what you just said. And these are citizens soldiers. I will note that too.

Yes. Where subjects become citizens is a really powerful, transformative point in history. And what a blessing of Providence that we as Americans are the inheritors of that point where we transform from subjects to citizens. Blake, final thoughts. I just, I want to make sure we shout out 14 books, Washington's Immortals, The Indispensibles, Revolutionary Snipers, but 11 others. He's got books on World War II and the Civil War, the Unvath. I know you mentioned there. So give Patrick's books a look.

What a wealth of knowledge of our great way to celebrate our country on Memorial Day. These are the guys who made it possible. They're the ones who got through the times that try men's souls, as Thomas Payne put it. So Patrick, thank you for coming on the show today. What a treat. Happy Memorial Day to you. It was an honor. Thank you so much for having me on.

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slash kirk for your free investor kit five minutes today can protect decades of savings noble gold investments dot com slash kirk we talked a lot about this and i'm going to detail why america's the greatest country in the history of the world first and foremost it's 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 supernatural 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. This is the Charlie Kirk show here on Memorial Day. So happy Memorial Day to all of you. I hope you are spending this day in gratitude for the gifts of providence that have been bestowed upon the American people and the American Republic. And in hour one, lot of time thinking about the revolution the boys of 76 and 77 and that was an awesome conversation and now we're going to kind of widen the aperture and think about some other sacrifices that great Americans have made throughout the years in different wars and different eras so to help us do that is dr mark moyer hillsdale college he's the william p harris chair of military history uh dr moyer welcome to the show that's great to be with you so you i we have this the first

we've had you on the show and it's an honor to have you and i i said well what is he specialized in you know what like what era should we have he's like he'll talk about anything he could talk about any of the military history which is what a testament to you because there's a lot uh there's a lot but i think what would be most uh fascinating because we you know you could do a whole hour on the civil war you could talk a lot about that you could talk about 1812 um and and there's been a lot of ink spilled and it's a really fascinating history. But why don't we advance our attention up and fast forward to the 20th century and what brings us up to now? Because I know you've done a lot of work on the Vietnam War and the Korean War, but let's start this first segment on World War I and World War II, maybe some stories

of sacrifice of the American story that are just unique to this country. Yeah, well, World War I is fascinating case. It's something we don't tend to know as much about as Americans. we should, but it was a war that was fraught with controversy, both as America gets in and afterwards, which is worth remembering because, in fact, most of our wars have controversy of this sort. But the American military really was not very well prepared, and this is really a turning point in our history, that we had thought we could be citizen soldiers and that we didn't need to have a large standing army. So we send over an army that is really not well prepared for the war it's about to enter. And so you have a lot of Americans suffering. You know,

the initial plan for General Pershing was that we were going to break out of this trench warfare, of which we're all too familiar, these horrific conditions, people spending years in these awful trenches. and the Americans hope to get out of it, but ultimately we end up having to fight that conflict. And it really is a bitter one that does have, it does certainly have its share of heroes. The Americans do get there just in time to save the allied cause. Yeah, you know, that's a really fascinating dynamic that you just pinpointed.

It is, you know, because citizen soldiers, this idea that we could not have a standing army, And yet there was an isolationist streak in the U.S. that was very deep and very profound. And yet we went off to go save Europe, which was a tremendous sacrifice on so many levels. Maybe I'm really curious about the American psyche at the time of entering World War I. I mean, what kind of country were we? And how controversial was it to send us in the first place when I mentioned this isolationist streak? Yes. Well, it's interesting because the country at the turn of the century has this resurgence of patriotism when the Spanish-American war comes.

You have massive amount of volunteering. And when World War I comes, you do still have lots of volunteers. But that war, it certainly had some controversy. You had Irish Americans and German Americans who weren't excited about fighting against their native countries. And a lot of people just asking, why is this? fight concerned us and Britain had was was blockading Germany and so some American questions whether whether that was fair so but there there was certainly an enormous sense of patriotism you had a great faith in in the nation and its

ideals we didn't have any of the sort of questioning that we're going to see you know in about five decades or so within this country mm that is it's it's It's done. You know, I think people, average Americans wouldn't even understand what the war was about, which historians argue about what the war was about. And they found them, and they found themselves asking that question very shortly after. I think an interesting strain in American life is in the 1930s, it was already very popular. What did we achieve in that? Because over 100,000 Americans died in that conflict. And that's far less than World War II. It's less than the Civil War. But it's a lot. more than we lost in Vietnam, for example. And if you looked around, yeah, we triumphed. But America started to ask what was the point of that. And we do find ourselves asking that about a lot of wars ever since. Yeah, in some ways it was the... Yeah, that's correct. It's, there is this wave of isolationism. A lot of people look back and say, you know, did we really fight this for the wrong reasons? And there was some truth to the fact that British propagandists were exaggerating

what the Germans were saying. And now, there were other arguments that we were somehow the munitions industry pulled us in. But, you know, we'd have this series of neutrality acts passed in the 1930s because of this general unease and this idea that we got sucked into a war that we didn't necessarily need to. And yeah, 100,000 Americans is an enormous price to pay. Of course, there's no better time to remember that that on Memorial Day. Yeah. What would, you know, what was the, um, uh, I guess the, you got talking about these neutrality acts, but like I think about the post great war era and you takes us into the booming 20s, right? The, you, you had a massive economic

growth. The country industrializes. What were the big lessons learned, I guess, and what were the ramifications of that war? Well, the, for a lot of Americans, there, there was this sense that we didn't really want to get outside our hemisphere. We should stay here. The Europe. Europeans, of course, have had been warring for centuries. And, you know, Warren Harding promised to return to normalcy that we were going to get back to our domestic affairs and not go crusading around the world. And there was also a general sense that Woodrow Wilson had gone too far with his idealism and his talk about how we have to make the world safe for democracy and put other countries' interest on a par with ours. and you had people returning to the notion that, yeah, we like the rest of the world, but this is our country and its interests come first.

Man, all, I'm just, it's occurring to me now just how this would echo, as you said, five decades later, but even now, how how much foreign affairs like this can really challenge a domestic population of like, when is it worth it? When is it worth putting American lives on the line, lives and treasure? I find it oddly comforting to know that this is that other generations have wrestled so greatly with this question. So let's fast forward. Now we're at World War II.

How big of a mobilization in the history of the United States did this represent? And you talk about controversy with World War I. How controversial was getting into World War II? Yes, there's great questions. And we talked before about what some of the things, people learned. One of the biggest problems we had after the war was there was this notion that we had fought the war to end all wars. Now we're going to disarm because weapons cause war. And so we have these disarmament efforts. But it turns out the bad guys don't always play by the rules.

And so Germany and Japan start rearming. And the United States and other countries are late in coming to the game. And so, just barely is Franklin Roosevelt able to start mobilizing, and that's not really until after the fall of France in May of 1940. And the economy really won't get on a war footing until after Pearl Harbor. But once it happens, of course, it will be the biggest military buildup in world history, 12 million Americans going. You know, a lot of them volunteered, a lot of them drafted as well. and that does have implication because when you have a smaller war, you can rely on a lot of volunteers,

but now you're really digging into the population in a great way. And so that's partly why we think of this generation as the greatest generation because so many of them went on to serve in the war. So one thing that this points to, World War I, World War II, we went into both conflicts with a pretty small military that we massively expanded. Ever since World War II, we've never really had a small military ever since. We sort of permanently have a large one. We do draft a large army again for Korea for Vietnam.

But after that, we go to the all-volunteer military. This is getting a little more philosophical abstract. Did America's identity change at all from that shift towards having a significant standing army that is professional and all-volunteer, as opposed to a small army of conventional, often drafted citizen soldiers. Yeah, that's an excellent question too. And, you know, there is, certainly with World War II, we're going to have a military on an unprecedented scale. But there is, after World War II, a huge demobilization effort.

And you go from about 12 million to, I think, 600,000 very quickly. And so the country actually will be very unprepared for the Korean War. when you get to the Korean War, there's a case of Task Force Smith, which was sent to try to stop the North Koreans in the early stages, and they lack equipment and lack suitable leadership. And so this becomes the rallying cry for those who think we need greater readiness, that we want no more task for Smiths. And so it's really, from that point on, I think you've got this really greater conviction that we, given our new position in the world, simply.

cannot afford to wait until war comes to prepare for war. That's fast. And the identity, though, to drill deeper in that, you know, this idea that we now inhabited this position in the world that we had to sort of police it, you know, you got, you think back to Eisenhower, though, and he's warning about the military industrial complex. You know, this idea of national identity, though, did it shift in World War II? Was it the after-war propaganda, the film? you know, that glorified these brave men and women, the fights.

Is that all that kind of contributed to it, or was it the war itself? The war, I think, certainly had a very strongly unifying effect. And you had, you know, a lot of recent immigrant groups into the country being pulled together people from different parts of the country. So I think it had a unifying and generally positive effect on the country. Now, when you get to this question of the military, complex, that is a trickier one. And as I said, I think Americans were hoping we were going to have this peace dividend after the war, and there was expectations the Soviets were going to play nice.

But it turned out the Soviets had a pernicious ideology that was bent on world domination. So we had to counter that. But I think Eisenhower realized by the end of his second term that in doing so, we were building this massive defense establishment, and that when you build something that big, it can be a threat to liberty, especially when it gets involved in politics. We see this more recently, if you look at the tech giants and how people are concerned about their influence over politics. But he certainly recognized there was this peril, as did a lot of other Americans, but at the same time you have these challenges to deal with.

So it's a very difficult question. Yeah, and it's interesting, too. You said 12 million people were mobilized during World War II. The U.S. population in 1940 from the census was that we had 132 million. So you're basically looking at about 10% of the entire population was activated, specifically to go fight and put on a uniform, which is wild to think about. wild. I mean, we all know somebody in the military now, but like 10% of the entire population be mobilized for that. And then everybody back home, Rosie the Riveters and everybody throwing in

for the war effort. Like, I just don't think there's just no level. We've never since had that sort of all-consuming mobilization of the country before. We were fighting to win. And it's worth asking, you know, we mentioned how the country changed. And one of those things you think is, could we do it today? If we somehow got in a conflict, with China, would we be able to come out and say, everyone's got to mobilize, we need to take 10% of people into government service, would people be up for it? Would our current bureaucracy be able to management? This Mother's Day month, you can help make motherhood possible. If you've ever joined us providing ultrasounds and saving babies with preborn, thank you.

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100% of your gift goes directly to providing ultrasound. So call or click right now and join us in saving babies and moms so that next year there's even more to celebrate. Call 833850 Baby. That's 833850229 or click on the preborn banner at charliekirk.com. Let's fast forward to Vietnam. You know, our modern imaginations have seen all the videos and all the movies. But this was like a war on. like any other. Maybe you could say that about World War II, certainly World War I, but this changed

America forever. Just set the backdrop of what made it extraordinary and why was it so controversial? Yes, it is, I think, our most misunderstood war, which is why I've spent so much time looking at it, but when it starts out in the 50s with an American commitment to South Vietnam, there is broad bipartisan in support for helping South Vietnam as part of the containment policy. We have set up a series of anti-communist allies in Asia, fought the Korean War to save South Korea. We're supporting Taiwan, Japan. And so there is general consensus that Asia is a critical part of the world, and we need allies there. And so it doesn't really get controversial until 1964. And really, some of the controversy starts in 1963. There's this disastrous coup that we

support, which is a huge mistake. But then President Kennedy himself is assassinated just after that. And so you have Lyndon Johnson coming in. And he is really focused on his reelection. And, well, this will come back to haunt him because he talks about how he's not sending American boys to Vietnam. and then after he's elected, he will send American boys to Vietnam. But I think the rationale in terms of protecting the region from communist influence, I think, has stood the time very well. And if you look in the region we have today anti-communist allies, I think you can make the case that we actually saved many of those allies,

but what we did in Vietnam. But the war itself was fought in, unfortunately, way in many respects. And so a lot of the disillusionment comes with the fact that the Johnson administration tried was called gradual escalation, where we thought we would slowly increase the pressure on North Vietnam, but it ended up just playing into their hands. But, you know, when Nixon comes in, you know, it's been a war for the Democrats, and Nixon could have thrown up his hands and walked away, but he said, no, this is still in our national interest. which I think he deserves a lot of credit for.

But a lot of the opposition that comes out, too, is connected to, I think, the baby boom. And you have a lot of people who aren't really that focused on Vietnam, but they want to criticize their own country. And so Vietnam becomes a convenient, a whipping boy. That's interesting. And it's very possibly right. There was a lot of social turmoil and change in America while this was unfolding. But do you think there is an unfortunate template that, got set with Vietnam.

You mentioned they try gradual escalation. And what stands out to me about that is, did America gradually escalate any other war we fought? I don't think Lincoln tried gradual escalation in the Civil War. I don't think FDR was doing anything like that with World War II. No, you just, you hyper-mobilized to win the war. And once the war was done, you rapidly demobilize. And suddenly you have this almost, it's like war as a management consultant would come up with it,

a lot of the guys who ran that war, Robert McName, I think he literally was a consultant beforehand or kind of that type of person he worked at Ford Motors. Did we get sort of caught in the wrong loop where we started to treat conflicts as a thing to be managed that you could calibrate, you could half fight a war, and we've been doing that ever since. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Half fighting the war with Iraq, half fighting the Afghan war. You've got these wars where you can't easily define what you're actually trying to, to achieve. You don't know what victory looks like. We didn't know that with Vietnam, and we had that same issue with wars we fought since. Do you think America got stuck in some sort of doom loop there? Yes. And in 64 and 65, there are these sharp debates where you have the military, and these are generals who had fought in World War II in Korea, and they're saying, okay, if we're going to fight here, we're going to give them everything we've got, and we're going to hit them hard right away.

but you had McNamara pushing back on that. And one of the most sort of pathetic aspects of all this is that McNamara was very influenced by academic theorists who were using game theory and these other abstractions to try to come up with some new ways to manage conflict. And it just turned out to be a complete disaster. But yeah, he came from the business world and he had a, a strong arrogance. He was also intellectual who thought that these abstract theories had some place in the world. But it turned out, you know, human nature hasn't actually changed. And the ways you fight wars really shouldn't change either. How did it change America? You know, and because, again, I have in my childhood and growing up, I mean, from Forrest Gump onward, you know, you get so much Vietnam era content that's been created.

And it feels all very depressing. And you think about the backdrop of it. You had racial tension and the riots, Watts riots in the 60s, and then you had this basic malaise that started setting in in the 70s. How did it change the identity of America and the way we felt about ourselves? Yes, well, it was the first war where you had a significant part of the population actively disparaging military. service. Now, in other words, you'd had plenty of people dodging the draft, but this time you had the baby boomers claiming that, in fact, they were the real heroes because they didn't go to this

war, which they thought was immoral. They didn't have a great case for that. And so this spills over into what follows in a lot of the media depictions. I think one of the worst things that happens in the Vietnam War is that a lot of these people end up putting the blame on veterans and veterans are treated horrifically after the war. And eventually the left kind of figured this out. And so in later conflicts, you don't have this same vilification. And I think probably makes sense. Everyone needs to know that it's the politicians who actually make these decisions about war

and not the truth. But you've had this general, I think ever since that time, you've seen much of the left side of the political spectrum has been hostile to the military. And I think that's also been a problem in terms of maintaining national unity when you have so many people who are disparaging this important institution. So you mentioned the baby boomers were different in the sense that they were prepared to disparage the war effort. What made the baby boomers disparage it? Was it the fact they were getting drafted? Was it the mission itself?

Was it the idea that you're not killing other white Europeans? but you're you know you're these are vietnamese in the jungles like what what was the central kernel of that drove such controversy well i think actually it's was fundamentally about their own self-preservation now they tried to dress it up in more idealistic terms but you got to remember this was the most the generation that had grown up in the greatest degree of affluence and i think they were rightly characterized by some of their elders as saying this is a generation of spoiled brats. They've had too much given to them. And now, you know, as we know, spoiled brats tend not to want to make sacrifices and, and do hard things.

And so that was really driving it. And you can see this too because when the draft ends, most of the opposition to the war goes away. And so you had these young people who were self-absorbed and they thought they were so important that, you know, they didn't want to risk their lives in some far away conflict. So Dr. Moyer, is your perspective that the aims and ambitions of the war effort were noble, were they rightly placed, or was it a miscalculation? I think it's the fundamental objective of containing communism in Asia was spot on. And again, we can see the consequences still today.

China is no longer technically communist, but they are still, our number one threat. And so we've sustained these alliances. Asia's economy is hugely important. And by making a stand there, we bought time for our allies to stay. Now, it was disastrous the way we left them in 1975, which was, you know, the Congress being petulant and upset at Nixon, partly over Watergate. But, you know, I think it was tremendously unfortunate, although we have benefited from the fact that we've got so many. great Vietnamese who've come to this country, our current acting secretary of the Navy is actually a child of Vietnamese who came here. But you've also got to remember we were fighting against an ideology that killed 100 million people worldwide. That's international communism. They killed more than fascism, but a lot of people don't talk about that, but that I think has to be at the center of the conversation. Yeah, I mean, gosh, you're saying these things, And I think that they are, for example, Korea, South Korea is a thriving country now, unlike North Korea, because of the sacrifices of the Korean War.

You know, that was a bit of a stalemate. It's the, in retrospect, history has not judged it as a full win, right? You know, but I think it was a win. Vietnam, it feels a little murkier to me, but you're giving me something to think about. And yeah, I mean, listen, the baby boomers, they get mad at me on this show and they got mad at Charlie a lot. But I think there's some truth. I mean, listen, if you grow up with the war dividend and this massive amount of wealth and this optimism, and then all of a sudden you get drawn down back into sort of a foreign conflict and a war overseas,

yeah, I think they had a good point, you know? You don't want to go have to fight a war in far-flung places, but was the overall objective noble, you know, to stop communism? It's tough to argue your point there, doctor. All right, Blake, we were having a conversation. And Dr. Moyer, I wonder if you would agree with it. But you were saying, as you wrestle through Vietnam... I just think about with Vietnam, what made me so sad about it is if you look at the people who signed up to go fight for that war, there were drafties, but there were many volunteers.

And it was one of the... Actually, a great generation of Americans who were incredibly patriotic, incredibly pro-America, incredibly anti-communist. wanted to serve their country and they had a leadership of this country that told them this is crucial for America's security this is a war that is as important as anything we've ever fought and we have a plan to win this

and it feels like a huge tragedy to me in that I feel that a lot of those men who went and many of them died that they were kind of lied to they were lied to both about the nature of the war itself but also especially having a plan that we had leaders, this was the first big case of us getting into a war where we didn't have a clear-cut idea of how to win it.

And even after it was clear, they didn't have that idea that the war was sort of perpetuated because it had inertia to it. Like it would be politically costly to back out. We were pot committed. Yeah, I think about that. It's similar with like Afghanistan for an example, where you have U.S. troops continuing to die because Lindsay Graham has decided, I am a tough war on terror guy, and that means this war must continue. I'm curious about that, Dr. Moria, because Vietnam was the politicians leading it were World War II vets, right? They had fought in this triumphant war.

Was the approach, this gradual escalation, were they trying to adjust for the traumas of World War II that they, I mean, were they trying to avoid some of that? What's the, like, where does that come from when you were so triumphant and so victorious that you would then go and lead men to battle in this kind of haphazard way? Well, the idea of limiting the war and gradual escalation comes mainly from McNamara, and he pushes it with Johnson, who was barely at all in World War II. He's in it for a brief moment, and he flies on an airplane once and tries to make into a big deal. but they are sort of petrified of nuclear war. Now, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they are coming up with some alternative strategies, which actually I think would have won the war. One is to invade North Vietnam. One is to go into Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. One is to step up the bombing of North Vietnam. And they kept recommending these things. And Johnson and McNamara kept saying,

oh, no, we can't do that because we're going to bring the Chinese and the Soviets in. Now, Richard Nixon will end up doing some of those things, and it turns out Chinese and the Soviets sat on their hand. So there's this terrible miscalculation, and things are going better in the end, and had it not been for Watergate, I think the South would have been, would have held on. But one of the most important things to know about Vietnam veterans is that by large majorities, they believe that the main problem in Vietnam was that the politicians would not land. let the military win the war, which is something, you know, you don't hear the mainstream media and movie and so forth. They don't want you to get that message. They want to say that this was some unwinnable conflict. But as someone who spent decades looking at this, I can say that that's definitely not the case. There were strategies that would have succeeded had we not

been so petrified of what the Chinese or the Soviets might think. You know, that's a great. great place to end it because it takes us kind of up into our present moment where President Trump has said, hey, the war on terror, you saw this in Trump 1.0, where he unshackled the U.S. military to really achieve objectives, to use the full force and might of the U.S. military. It seems like, you know, we've almost come out of this really bad, you know, I would say it's like 50 years of kind of really tough lessons. Do you predict that we've learned our lessons? from this era. I mean, because we have the bravest men and women, the most awesome military on the planet, but we also don't want to fight dumb wars, right? We don't want to keep this foreign adventurism.

I guess in the final minute and a half, two minutes we have here, have we learned our lessons. Are we in a better place now? Well, I think this country is not always one of our fortays of learning the right lessons. Of course, there's a lot of lessons you can learn from history. And one of the big problems you have is that sometimes we try to. apply the lesson of one place in another. And so when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of people who supported those were saying, well, we can we can democratize these places because it worked in other countries. Well, it turns out Iraq and Afghanistan are Islamic states with different cultures. I think that is the biggest reason why we failed in those places. Now, I do think

we've learned, if you look at what people say about Iran now, I think we recognize, well, we've now tried in Iraq and Afghanistan to turn them into democracies didn't work. And so probably doesn't make a lot of sense to send hundreds of thousands of troops into Iran and try the same thing. Yeah. I mean, we could disagree till we're blue in the face about Iran or you could agree with it. But boots on the ground in a nation of 90 million with sectarian splits in a deeply ingrained regime, you know, thankfully we're not doing that. And hopefully, we won't ever have to do that. Dr. Moore, it's been a pleasure. What a breadth of knowledge you possess. I literally didn't. I didn't even tell the folks that we were working to coordinate this,

how we were going to do it, and I was just told you could, and boy, could you. So, hats off to you. Thank you for joining us on this Memorial Day special. We pray that you have gratitude for what the men and women have done to preserve this nation, and thank you for joining us today. Thanks. Great to be with you guys. Yeah, Hillsdale College is the best. We love those guys. Happy Memorial Day. Be grateful for the sacrifice that was made on your behalf to enjoy the greatest country in the history of the world. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.