Roger Marsh: For Family Talk, here's Dr. James Dobson.
Dr. James Dobson: According to many teachers, the answer is not laziness or poor study skills. No, the main reason for failure in high school is disorganization. Show me a student's notebook and I'll tell you whether that individual is a B student or a D student. An achieving student's notebook is organized with dividers and folders for handouts and assignments. A failing student's notebook is most often a mess of jumbled papers, if he even uses a notebook at all.
Now, some children are just better organized than others, but it's a skill that can be learned. Educational expert Cheri Fuller says it's a skill that should be taught early, even before students reach junior high school. Starting in the middle school years, students may have as many as five teachers with different textbooks, workbooks, handouts and assignments from each classroom subject. It takes a good degree of organization to keep them all straight and to put assignments in priority.
They need training and other organizational skills, such as planning to complete long-term assignments a little at a time. This kind of exposure and training can help a flighty adolescent become a self-disciplined and self-propelled individual in time. Organization, it's one very important key to success in school.
Roger Marsh: To find out how you can partner with Family Talk, go to drjamesdobson.org.
Charlie Kirk: These college campuses are no longer places of Socratic dialogue, they aren't. They've become indoctrination factories and almost places that produce activists, not enlightened minds. Young people always are going to determine where the country is headed. It's pretty obvious, but we need to articulate it. And when you have the places that are supposed to be about higher learning around the pursuit of truth and knowledge, their output are people that are less thankful for the country that they were raised in. We should just have a pause and concern and say, "What are we exactly doing here? Is this helpful for the Republic? Is this going to be beneficial to what we're trying to achieve?" The final thing I'll say, Doctor, which is what we have been able to do at Turning Point is be able to persuade hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, to re-embrace first principles to understand the country that they live in and have respect for it.
Roger Marsh: America is standing at a momentous crossroads, one that may forever change our future. Like never before, Judeo-Christian values are being undermined, while the very history of America is being vilified. Extremist groups are plotting to completely upend the United States as we know it. So what can be done to protect our country and to reinforce her foundations? Well, on today's edition of Family Talk, Dr. James Dobson continues his powerful and insightful conversation with Charlie Kirk. Charlie is the founder and president of the largest national student movement called Turning Point USA. The focus for today's conversation will be the attacks being levied against the church and capitalism. There's a lot of discussion to get to, so let's get started. Here again is our host, Dr. James Dobson.
Dr. James Dobson: You were interviewed by Pastor Jack Hibbs. He's the pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. It was a fascinating discussion. You and Jack talked for I guess two hours nonstop, and I sat riveted as I heard you articulate where America is at this point and what's our direction and what is likely to lie ahead for us, and what are your major concerns. I wish every Christian could have watched that video. I don't know if it's still available, but it was powerful. And I want to pick up with some of the things you talked about. America really is on the edge of a cliff right now, isn't it?
Charlie Kirk: It really is, Doctor, and we're at a cultural inflection point where we are going to decide who we are as a country. Are we thankful that we live in America or are we angry that we live in America? Who are we as a country? What is our history? Is it something that we can learn from and be proud of that is a hero's journey? Or is it something worth completely eliminating and abolishing? Are we a country that really wants to judge people on their immutable characteristics? Are we a country that wants to empower people from all across the world to be able to succeed?
And so all these questions are now being asked in a very direct way. And quite honestly, some of these questions were settled long ago as part of the American ethos or the American Trinity, if you will, of E pluribus Unum, In God We Trust and the idea of liberty, which of course the liberty giver being God. And so, we have a serious task at hand to be able to preserve and save this republic, because as things stand right now, there is a very serious and dedicated, motivated and well-funded activist campaign to try to destabilize Western society. And we must speak very clearly and confidently about it and do something about it.
Dr. James Dobson: I heard Tucker Carlson on his own show, I don't know if you had an opportunity to hear him when he talked about the fact that we are steadily losing our constitutional rights. And he compared us to Communist China and said that in some ways China is more free than we are, because you can't say certain things. And that politically correct influence is such that we have to think before we even talk. Freedom of speech is now under attack, as are all of the rights granted to us in the Constitution. I don't know if you saw that program, but it really had major implications for the future.
Charlie Kirk: I saw a clip of it, and Tucker's a dear friend who does an amazing job, and it's true. We are now going into these very dangerous road of both micro tyranny and macro tyranny, where people are afraid to speak their mind without backlash of losing their job and basically losing all of their friends. We also have macro tyranny where we have decided as a country, incorrectly, that salvation and church is not essential.
Dr. James Dobson: Religious liberty is right in the bullseye, isn't it? It's just being attacked on every front.
Charlie Kirk: That's right. And there's a reason for it. The authoritarians will never allow a power to exist greater than their own. And by definition, the church and the gathering of believers, they recognize there is a higher power than the elected officials or the state, and it's Christ. It is God Almighty. And so the authoritarians, and this is a pattern that they did all throughout the 20th century, they need to remove the church in order to implement a massive totalitarian power grab. So this is a crisis, Doctor. And Christians right now, I believe we have to become much more active and vocal in this time of national crisis. And I am worried that the statists and the collectivists and the atheistic activists, they are getting very close to knowing that they can push Christians almost with no backlash at all whatsoever. So I believe it is more ample time than ever to stand for truth and especially with courage.
Dr. James Dobson: Charlie, let's talk about socialism and what it means. Are we really toying with that whole change of way of life and departing from the Constitution and the privileges and rights that it's granted to us?
Charlie Kirk: Yeah, I'm afraid we're headed in that direction. More and more young people embrace socialism than capitalism. My generation looks more favorably on Marxist ideas than on capitalistic ideas. Socialism is one of the most dangerous human experiments in recorded history. Over a hundred million people that we know of perished under socialist ideas in the 20th century. And socialism can happen very gradually and then suddenly, before you know it, your country is ruled by a small ruling class. There is no middle class, it gets destroyed and the government comes in and basically controls everything. This is how a country basically decides it no longer wants to exist.
If we do embrace these ideas, these Marxist ideas that are immoral, evil and anti-biblical, the repercussions that it will have, not just in the Western world, but all across the world, will be impossible to calculate. Our country right now is going through a crisis of who we are. It's an identity crisis. And if we allow these malevolent Marxist ideas to continue to spread without us confronting and proving them wrong, they will be implemented in a public policy and also into the majority of the country. And one of the reasons this happens is we have not taught our young people proper history, proper constitutional literacy, and they do not understand the difference between Marxism and capitalism or any of the sinister ideas behind it.
Dr. James Dobson: How do you explain the passion of the far left to destroy all worthwhile human institutions? The family, marriage, law, order, the church and the Creator, to replace it with chaos? What is the motive? What's the driving impetus here?
Charlie Kirk: Well, people that are hurt try to hurt others, and they really have very little meaning in their own personal life. A lot of these people are not Bible believing Christians and a lot of them do not believe in absolute truth. And they've also been convinced that we live in the worst society and civilization ever. That it is their role to deconstruct something evil around them. This is pathological. There is no basis for this at all whatsoever. This sort of train of thought is perfected in the university system. And I also, I attribute a lot of their anger and a lot of their bitterness to a lack of personal direction in their own life. They see themselves as a vessel to deconstruct this beautiful gift that we have been given.
I get asked the question a lot, "Well, what do they want?" They really don't know. They don't. All they know is that the current arson of America, the current disintegration, gives them purpose. There really is no end goal. There isn't like a blueprint that they're trying to achieve. Some of them have some form of a utopia that they think they can get to, but a vast majority of them, that are going on this path, are either doing it because they want to assume unilateral political power or that they themselves actually find momentary meaning in convincing themselves that they're doing something moral by trying to disrupt and destroy Western society.
Dr. James Dobson: Charlie, perhaps the writer and the anarchist in the cities and on the streets may not know what he or she wants as you said. But I tell you, I think I do know what the leaders of the organizations want. They want chaos. They prefer it, because when given a choice between chaos and tyranny, people will nearly always choose tyranny. It's amazing, because tyranny is less predictable than chaos. People can't live with utter confusion where they don't know where their next meal is coming from. But that lends itself to tyranny and that's what the organizers want, which is power.
Charlie Kirk: It's exactly right. They want to make themselves God. They want ultimate power. Chaos is a gateway drug to authoritarianism. When you are able to establish disorder or disunity, it gives license for singular power to be able to control. So if you look at all the great power grabs in human history in Cuba or Venezuela or in China or in Russia, especially in the 20th century, you must sow discord. Form a civil war, turn people against each other, because at that moment then people want stability. Even if that stability means a total autocracy, fine. Just get me out of that piece of momentary chaos that we might be in.
The left knows this. The left wants us to be in a state of disorganization. They want us to be in a state of people unsure of the next day or the next week. And they believe that they will be able to comfort people under the promises of some form of an American dictatorship. Very, very dangerous. We know that the laws of nature and nature's God work. They work for a reason. And if you disobey those laws, you will be in a state of chaos. And that we need order and that we need direction. The left goes a step further. They want the chaos not as an end, but as a means to an end of totalitarianism.
Dr. James Dobson: Give us a primer on socialism. What does it really mean? There are people listening to us who've heard that word many times. They don't really know what a socialistic system would impose on us.
Charlie Kirk: Well, socialism violates two out the 10 commandments. We'll start with that. Thou shall not covet and thou shall not steal. Socialism was theorized by the philosopher, it's hard to call him a philosopher. Let's just call him the author, Karl Marx. I don't know if I want to give him the credit of being a philosopher. He was inspired by a French philosopher by the name Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who really took exception with the biblical idea of natural or original sin. The communists and the socialists at their elemental philosophical level, they actually believe that human beings are basically good and that it is the system around us that is broken. And if we fix the system and therefore human beings will actually be able to live in a state of utopia.
The Rousseauians or the Marxists or the socialists, they actually prefer the primitive over the civilized. They prefer the infant over the adult. They prefer the commune over the individual. They prefer disloyal, passionate behavior over strong and stable families. Rousseau talked about this. And so socialism is a creed of envy, greed, failed utopian promises and quite honestly, the furthest extension of the worst sinful behavior I think we possibly can have as human beings. It's almost us thinking that we can create Heaven on earth, which we know is not true. It's believing that we have all the answers governmentally and socially and societally for all people. And it's also centralizing all power and control to a singular uni-body, not decentralizing and giving people freedom and liberty to choose as they see fit.
Socialism has been tried well over 100 times over the last 100 years on every single continent of which we have inhabitants. And it has never worked. Not only has it not worked, the result has been a brutal, catastrophic death toll, of well over a hundred million people, no matter what culture, a civilization that Marxism enters into. It will result in a power grab of an autocrat that will exploit the innocent, that will destroy the dissidents and will eliminate any sort of human flourishing imaginable. From Zimbabwe, which used to be called Rhodesia, to the failed Marxist experiments in Southeast Asia of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to the Korean Peninsula, to the island of Cuba, to Venezuela.
We have seen socialism tried everywhere, and it is an evil ideology that we must recognize spot and fight back against wherever it rears its immoral head.
Dr. James Dobson: If you want to see where socialism leads, look at Venezuela. That was one of the most wealthy nations in Latin America because of the oil reserves. Look at them now. They're completely destitute. And you said on television, if socialism works, why did the caravans try to come to America and force their way through the border instead of going to Venezuela? If socialism is what they wanted, why didn't they go there? It never works. Why does it never work? What's wrong with socialism that makes it fail inevitably?
Charlie Kirk: It goes up against human nature, I should say, biblically. It believes that human beings can be perfected. It believes that the state can be an instrument that can be used to try to, let's just say, go forth and eradicate the imperfections that might exist previously. And it also inevitably gives far too much power in a small group of people's hands, that will use that power and abuse that power. Lord Acton famously said, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." And he was exactly right. Socialism by definition, if the state is going to control everything, if the government is going to control everything, well, that means a small group of people are going to control everything.
We as Christians, I know that human beings are flawed by nature. In fact, we believe we are depraved by nature and original sin. So why would you give a small group of people who are inherently sinful, power over everything? They're going to abuse that power, they're going to misallocate resources. And eventually the very worst sociopathic pathological people will then use that power that exists as a reason to be able to destroy and eliminate any sort of opposition to them, which is why the death toll is always correlated with socialism. If the government controls all of healthcare and all of automation and all of energy like in Venezuela, that means they're also going to use that form of centralized power to go after anyone that speaks differently than them. They'll close down the churches like Stalin did in the Soviet Union. It will never work because it goes against how God made us. It is un-biblical.
Dr. James Dobson: Yet, I saw a poll the other day that said 40% of millennials favor socialism. I mean, is it free stuff? Is that's what's driving it?
Charlie Kirk: It's free stuff is one part of it. It's our university system that has convinced them that this is a good idea. Our university system is heavily socialistic and pro Marxist, that tries to communicate to young people that this has never been tried before. And that is a foolish lie. It has been tried, as I mentioned, over 100 times over the last 100 years. And so young people predominantly favor socialism to capitalism. And also a lot of these young people are suffering under massive amounts of student loan debt. They are living in heavily crowded urban centers. They have not been able to find meaning, religiously or spiritually. And so they look to a statist centered solution, if you will, that will try to give them meaning that only Christ and only God can give them. And they think that, "If we just get the government a little bit bigger, it'll eradicate these problems and maybe I'll be a happier person." When in reality it's the exact opposite. It will create more problems and they'll probably actually end up being miserable, more miserable in themselves than they actually already are.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, the only answer to our crisis, the only answer to the woes that we're going through now is a spiritual revival. A great awakening, a third Great Awakening. And do you see any evidence of it among the young?
Charlie Kirk: I do. I have young people coming to me in record numbers committing their life to Christ and asking very, very good questions about how they can attend church. And they are seeking ultimate truth and we must keep that as the primary focus. And the one thing I'll tell you, Doctor that's interesting, is that I am in the political arena and we have people of all faiths that are involved in Turning Point USA. I have seen more people come to Christ in what we are doing through the Galatians 3 model of the law being a school teacher to Christ, because people say, "Charlie, what you say makes sense. What else is there?" When I say, "Well, I'd love to tell you where this all comes from. You believe in natural rights. How about the natural rights giver?" And that sort of organized thinking actually brings people to Christ. And some of the church disagrees with me on this. And I can tell you, I have mountains of evidence to push back of people that actually came to Christ through politics. So I do think that we are on the verge of another Great Awakening.
Dr. James Dobson: That is the mostly exciting thing you've said, Charlie. And I just pray that that's true. The Christian people ought to be on their knees every day, especially at this time and what we're facing now. Let's talk about the election. We only have two or three minutes left, but Christians have a dismal record of not voting. I think it's 75% of Christians do not vote. Either don't register or don't go to the polls, which is the same thing. And that's hard to believe. Only 25% will take 15 minutes to go to the polls to let their voices be heard. And that must change, especially this time around.
Charlie Kirk: It has to. It's essential. Christians need to rise up in record numbers and vote for life and vote for freedom and vote for biblical principles. And if Christians rise up in record numbers, we can defend the republic. It really is going to be dependent on whether or not decent, reasonable Christ filled believers rise up and say, "We are not going to allow secular, humanistic, atheist, malevolent forces to take over our country." It's in Christian's hands, especially in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Florida. If Christians register and vote, it takes 15 minutes, you might be able to save this beautiful country of ours.
Dr. James Dobson: Charlie, you are a national treasure. You know what you say sets my soul on fire. I've never heard such wisdom coming from a millennial who draws what he believes from Scripture quite like you do. That is the source of the courage and the strength of character that we see in you. And I want to know what your future is. Have you thought that through? Where are you going?
Charlie Kirk: People ask me that... And thank you for the kind words. I deeply appreciate it and thank you. I take it to heart. People say, "Well Charlie, what's next?" And to be honest, I have the greatest job on the planet. I love talking to people, I love organizing them. Wherever God takes me, I'll be blessed by that. But I am so content. I am so filled with gratitude, with where I am that I truly mean this, I have nowhere else to go but to keep on moving forward with what I'm doing.
Dr. James Dobson: Do you see a political future for you?
Charlie Kirk: The answer is as far as I can see, which is not very far, no. Because I love what I do too much. I do. But God might have a different plan, who knows. But my plan right now is to keep on doing what we're doing.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, I'm asking our listeners to be in prayer for you, Charlie. You're really in a very critical position to communicate with the next generation that just doesn't get a lot of biblical wisdom that you espouse. So God be with you. God take care of you and continue doing what He's called you to do.
Charlie Kirk: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. God bless you. It's an honor Dr. Dobson.
Roger Marsh: Certainly an enlightening discussion about the threats facing our nation today here on Family Talk. Hope you enjoyed Dr. Dobson's fascinating conversation with Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA. And as Dr. Dobson just mentioned, he deserves our prayers and our support. Go to today's broadcast page at drjamesdobson.org and get plugged in with Charlie's organization and see where he will be speaking next. That's drjamesdobson.org. And then click on the broadcast tab at the top of the page. Well, that's all the time we have for today, be sure to join us again tomorrow for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. Thanks for listening.
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