My Conversations With Charlie Kirk

Yesterday, a guy I would call a friend, Charlie Kirk, was murdered. I wasn't sure I was gonna do anything about it. I was gonna post anything publicly about it, because I can't even imagine what his family is going through and what his really close friends are going through. You see, a few years ago now, Charlie Kirk and I talked about potentially doing something on college campuses together. He believed, like I do, that education is maybe the most important thing that we do. Charlie and I didn't agree on everything, and I don't think that's something we should strive for in humans. Actually, I think it's a really good thing for you to disagree sometimes intensely with other people. But we were talking about. Or really I was trying to convince Charlie that we should talk about business and economics and making money on college campuses, because it felt like kids had no hope there anymore. Like they thought that the generations before them got it better than they did, did not have economic opportunity. And I wanted to talk to them about how could we change that for them? And then time got away from us, and Charlie kept going until he became one of the biggest speakers on college campuses all around this country. And the reason I'm doing a quick podcast on it is because it has rattled me so deeply. I think that freedom of speech in the First Amendment is one of the most powerful things we can have as a country. I'm a former journalist. Our entire profession is built upon that, that right to speak and that. You know, I have a belief that deep down inside, if you cannot beat someone's arguments, then you need to be better skilled not to hope they die. I wrote down a few things because I didn't want to mess this up too badly by doing it publicly. But I have a couple thoughts. And the first thought is that you builders, the people who listen to this, we need you now more than ever. I think this country was built by doers just like you, those who believed that you could build stronger and not have to tear things down. See, I believe that it's harder to build a house than it is to burn it down. I don't know how to build a house, but I could burn one down. And so, inherently, it is always easier to tear down others, and it is always easier to apparently even kill another than it is to push back on their ideas by having better ideas yourself. The only other side of this is that I. I do actually believe in you. I meet you all over the world, everywhere, every day, real humans who I think are building the world that you want. And whether you agree With Charlie, or many of the things that he stood for as sort of irrelevant, I think it's a call to action for me at least to stand up and stop playing small and to keep building bigger and to get in the arena and to allow the competition of ideas to expand and to be thrilled at the idea that another human could have a debate debate with you, like an old school style debate in which ideology could combat against one another and see what the best for humanity could come out on the other side. I think it's a tragedy when anybody passes. I think it's a tragedy that we lost multiple youths as well on the same day. But having known Charlie, albeit briefly on the Internet, I can say that the ideology to me of faith and freedom and believing that others should be heard even when you disagree with them, is probably one of the most potent things that we can do. And there was a quote from Charlie that I love and it's that if you believe in something, you need to have the courage to fight for those ideas, not run away from them or try and silence them. I think the worst thing that we could ever do is allow violence by anyone to silence another. And I won't be preachy about anything on here, but I will say that anybody who is cheering a fellow citizen and them being murdered probably doesn't want you to win either. And eventually they turn on you whether you want to or not. And so I think as a society and as a country, we need to come together a little bit more with the idea that it's not a good thing for people to be assassinated in this country. I called my parents last night, actually, because I was, I was really sad. And so I called my dad and said, do you remember when assassinations happened in the US when you were a kid? And he said, but it was a different time because social media isn't around you constantly. So, you know, their family members didn't have to see people celebrating and dancing on TikTok when they passed. You know, they didn't have to hear jokes and puns about it immediately following. And I just think that maybe a little bit of kindness would be something really useful both sides could use right now. And if you take nothing else away from this and what we're talking about, I hope maybe you take this, which is your ability to defend your ideas and then change your mind once you find better ones, is the single greatest reason you will succeed in life. Our democracy, this country and any other country falls if we actually do not allow our ideas to compete. It's core to humans. And it matters in science, and it matters in math, and it matters in business. You know, on this podcast, we've had Hindu monks. We've had a former pastor. We've had politicians on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans. We've had billionaires. We've had people who are broke. We've had the whole gambit. And the reason why is because we have to think like contrarians and question everything. And so today, I'm sad, and my condolences go out so deeply with his family and his wife and his beautiful children, and with all of us who would struggle in a world in which violence is the action to difference of opinion. So thank you for listening. And I hope this is a little bit of a tribute to a man that, to me, made a very big impression and who was not afraid to say his quiet part out loud.