The MAGA Doctrine Page 19

  The man is exceptional—entertaining America even while making his billions, being beloved even by most of those people he publicly fired.

  The man is resilient. Sure, not every company he started flourished, but that’s how business works. The distinction is, he never gave up.

  Look at how not only Democrats but the former leaders of his party counseled him to give up, to drop out of the 2016 presidential race, to admit he wasn’t even serious about it all.

  Senator Bob Corker called Trump support “cultish.” Mitt Romney warned that if Republicans nominated Trump, “the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.”

  Then he got elected, and the investigations started from day one. In addition to the Mueller investigation, Trump faced investigations over petty matters from the House Judiciary Committee, the House Oversight Committee, Ways and Means, Intelligence, Financial Services, and more. From the beginning, the Democrats and some Republicans could not accept the legitimacy of this president. They made it a mission to destroy him and the progress that he has achieved, so long as doing so meant we would get a different person in the Oval Office. Can you imagine rooting against your nation because you dislike the president? Well, in today’s world, some have openly called for the economy to tank and for things to go wrong because it might help prevent the reelection of this exceptional president. While liberals have harbored hate for him for a very long time, today they are quite open about it. This is shameful behavior.

  You might disagree with our president, but to root for your nation to fail? To root for a recession? This is entirely new and unchartered territory. To those who don’t believe in Trump Derangement Syndrome, I say it is very much real and in full force. TDS has overtaken entire sectors, from Hollywood to Congress. How many Hollywood elite stars think they are wonderful because during an award ceremony they got up and started swearing about our president? These coastal liberal elites lost, and they are in full denial and a state of rage over what they can do about it. Instead of presenting an alternative vision for America, the left has focused on hatred, impeachment, violence, and vulgar language. Pathetic behavior that will get them nowhere. (I wonder if they’ve even noticed that Hollywood has also thrived during his time in office. It’s hard to see what they have to complain about.)

  Democrats can’t accept that he won. Democrats appear to be willing to spend all 1,460 days of his presidency talking about impeachment. President Trump doesn’t give up, though, doesn’t quit, and doesn’t back down—and neither does America in the face of adversity.

  Never give up, never surrender, and always go for the win.

  Chapter 19

  An American Heritage

  As I look forward to a MAGA future, I also remember how I first started on the road toward conservatism.

  I have a sixth-grade social studies teacher to thank—though not in the way one usually thanks teachers and other mentors. Deviating from the usual civics lessons around the time of the Iraq War’s start, this teacher railed against then-president George W. Bush. I would come eventually to see the war in Iraq as a mistake myself and to see the Trump-era Republican Party as an improvement over the Republican Party of the Bushes.

  But of course the teacher couldn’t stop there. He went on to denounce the United States in general. He made the whole country’s history sound like a litany of evil, from genocide to slavery to oppression of women, capped by imperialism and mistreatment of immigrants. That’s a lot to foist on sixth-graders, though that’s normal in schools these days.

  You may have had similar experiences in childhood yourself. It was one of those moments in which you know the authority figure probably has most of his basic facts right, but you still have a nagging feeling that he’s missing something, something you can’t immediately identify. You also know that even though you’ve only been alive and part of this country for a few years, you feel attacked. This place that you love and trust is being trashed.

  It’s not that you believe the United States can do no wrong. You don’t dismiss the evils of slavery or think other terrible things from the history books are make-believe. You have a strong suspicion, though, that for all our mistakes, things worked out pretty well—not just for a few but for the population as a whole—eventually. There’s something fundamentally good about the United States, at least as compared to so many troubled and brutal places throughout the world, throughout history.

  Not just good about the United States—great.

  The teacher wasn’t suggesting everything about the United States was hopeless, either, but he made clear he thought that conservatives were leading the country down the wrong road. They were fools, he seemed to suggest, who thought in their arrogance that the country could do no wrong. The best hope for us all, then, was liberalism, and not just classical liberalism but the left. A good dose of self-doubt and shame might rein in this country gone awry, and voting for the Democrats was probably step one, at least if we took seriously the implied civics lesson underlying everything else we were hearing in social studies class.

  I was a kid. I wasn’t even sure what party my family was in. I guess I took it for granted the whole family would probably be in the same party, though I realize now that’s not necessarily the case. I also realize now that expecting a sixth-grader to pick a party is probably unhealthy.

  But I have a higher tolerance for politics than some people do. I kept thinking about the teacher’s rant, was troubled by it, and resolved to talk to my parents about it when I got home. I suppose that means the teacher was doing his job in some sense. He got me thinking, though I could have done without so much guilt-tripping and moral pressure.

  I asked Mom and Dad their party affiliation. Dad explained, contrary to what you might be expecting, that he and Mom were not steadfastly Republican Party–aligned. They voted Republican, yes, but they had other, much deeper loyalties, and if the Republicans went astray, they could well lose my parents’ votes.

  My parents said, among other things, that they were Christians and grateful Americans, and to the extent the Republicans captured those basic orientations, they felt a kinship to the Republican Party and would reward it with at least provisional loyalty. How could they be grateful to be Americans given all the terrible things I was learning about the United States in social studies class, though, and all the things the teacher was suggesting were true about a socially repressive, warmongering president like Bush?

  My father explained how much larger the United States is than any given year’s political controversies. The United States is the entire sweep of its centuries of history, including its proud tradition of protecting individual rights and its incredibly productive commercial culture.

  Still, I needed something objective, something bigger than personal rootedness to a tradition. My interest in defending the legal and political institutions of the United States led, with encouragement from Dad, to me reading things like economist Milton Friedman’s books, such as Capitalism and Freedom and (with his wife, Rose) Free to Choose. Friedman made the case that central planning is pitched to us as the answer to all our social ills, but for inescapable reasons rooted in the immutable laws of economics—which are really just logic applied to describing the way humans buy and sell things—central planning can never be as efficient as the individual, decentralized buying and selling decisions of billions of individuals.

  You and I trade because one of us has something to sell and the other something to buy, and we both feel, in subjective ways no outsider can judge without knowing our internal mental processes and preferences, that we’ll be better off from making the trade. Out of individual self-interest, we’re cooperating to mutual advantage, which is supposed to be what leftists want the whole world to do. Unfortunately, they fail to see how profiting from trade can be compatible with that humane goal. They think if someone is making money, it must have been stolen from somewhere or that someone has been exploited. If everyone involved expresses happiness with
the exchange, that’s just proof they’ve been brainwashed by the system, in the know-it-all judgment of the left.

  Friedman was clearly onto something, and throughout the second half of the twentieth century he made his arguments across different media with good humor and clarity, demonstrating that principles can be combined with effective communication, leading to political activism that made a real difference. Friedman was a big influence on the United States moving toward somewhat more stable Federal Reserve interest rates, the end of the peacetime military draft, increased school choice, and skepticism even among conservatives about the efficacy of the drug war. Some of those positions were not—still are not—standard conservative views, but they obviously were rooted in the logic of markets, not some hatred of America. Friedman was making a conservative, free-market case for limited government.

  He was also ahead of the curve in recognizing one of the big areas of contention in current conservative thinking: how to handle immigration. As a critic of regulation, someone who recognized that markets are global—and admired the free-market spirit of places like Hong Kong—Friedman preferred a virtually borderless world, but he argued that open borders are not compatible with an unrestrained welfare state that promises endless newcomers free goods extracted by force from the taxed populace. There had to be either an end to the welfare state or some limits on immigration. Perhaps one day when the entire apparatus of the modern welfare state has been turned into private and voluntary services, the United States can afford to let in everyone—everyone who abides by the rules of the marketplace and pays their own way—but until then, it’s good to have a wall.

  Reading Milton Friedman led me to read other thinkers who understood the interplay between economics and our political culture, among them Thomas Sowell, author of, among many other works, The Vision of the Anointed, about the way left-liberal intellectuals imagine themselves to be not just better informed but more moral than the rest of us—much as they hate to use the language of traditional morality. Sowell is a little closer than Friedman to the philosophical orientation of “Austrian School” economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.

  Sowell recognizes that it’s not just innocent consumers and businesspeople who are tempted to turn to some socialist-style central planning mechanism, such as big government, to relieve them of the perceived risks of the marketplace. It’s also the conniving central planners and all their dependents, whether in subsidized corporations, subsidized academic programs, or old media that thrive on intimate connections with high-placed sources in the political establishment. Add to them every intellectual who dreams, perversely, of being the one in charge and making a flawed society reshape itself according to the intellectual’s whims.

  A whole arrogant, well-off, smug stratum of society exists to replace your plans with its plans.

  The numerous topics Sowell has addressed in his books include America’s divisive racial politics, and admirably, instead of merely playing a race card of his own—Sowell is black—and insisting that his own personal experience is thus the be-all and end-all of evidence on the matter, he applies common sense and math in his book Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? to show how even the most well-meaning businesses, including minority-owned businesses, will likely run afoul of affirmative action and antidiscrimination regulations at some point. Just as thrown dice will not always turn up the same number, the most random and color-blind hiring in the world will not always yield a workplace perfectly matched to the demographics of the wider society.

  Then factor in all the real, historical—yet not hate-based—reasons for ethnic variations in choice of occupation that might produce different ethnic patterns in different businesses. Germans might be more interested in classical music than some other populations because of centuries-long family ties to traditions such as piano-making businesses. Chinese people, common sense suggests, might be slightly more interested in running Chinese restaurants than non-Chinese people—and there’s nothing wrong with that! Not as long as we continue to get along with each other, exchanging goods and ideas. That’s diverse America—not some artificially homogeneous, mathematically decreed experiment devised by the anointed moral arbiters of “social justice.”

  Through thinkers like Friedman and Sowell, I came to understand my own instinctual defense of America better. I wasn’t trying to defend bad, dysfunctional aspects of the country. I was defending our capacity for constant, inspiring improvement, improvements made by free individuals, not socialist committees giving orders to the rest of us. Friedman and Sowell both understood that, and unlike some of my peers, they also came from a generation that remembers the horrible consequences in Europe and Asia last century from ignoring the lessons of free-market economics and individualism. They remember communism and fascism, and they haven’t forgotten the toll.

  Meanwhile, some Generation Z trolls would like to revive socialism with a hip new face like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on it, and some on the other side of the political divide would like to revive fascism but treat it like a big inside (and online) joke this time, as if that turns it into a good idea.

  The best political idea is to stick to what made this country uniquely successful from the beginning, and it wasn’t socialism or fascism. On the contrary, it was limited government, freedom to engage in commerce, avoidance of entangling military alliances, respect for the individual’s rights, and an optimism born of boundless imaginative creativity. Those things made America great. We must not forget them. My parents remembered and changed my life by passing those ideas on to me, both by living according to those principles and pointing me toward the thinkers who make them more explicit.

  By remembering those ideas, we aren’t just winning the next election or defeating a few noisy pundits. We are honoring our ancestors, enriching the nation, and safeguarding our posterity. We are rising above the divisive current political squabbles to look at the big picture, which combines economics, constitutional law, culture, and individual integrity into the greatest formula for success humanity has yet devised.

  We are Making America Great Again.

  Acknowledgments

  To the fantastic team at Turning Point USA: You are the best team in the entire movement. No one works harder and achieves more than you. We are changing the world for the better. We are shaping the future of this nation. Thank you for all that you do!

  To President Trump: Thank you for saving our country and, unlike many who have come before you, keeping your word!

  To Rush Limbaugh: Thank you for giving me a passion for conservatism from a young age. Your daily wisdom keeps me on the right track.

  To Don Jr.: Thank you for everything you do for Turning Point USA and for your commitment to our country.

  To Kimberly Guilfoyle: You’ve always been a star and will continue to be one. Thank you for making Turning Point USA shine!

  To Jared and Ivanka: Thank you for your perseverance, which continues to deliver results, and for your incredible passion for making our world a better place. You sacrificed so much, and for that, the world will be a better place!

  To my parents: Thank you for always believing in me, for always being there for me. I am grateful and love you both!

  To Bill Montgomery: Thank you for the original encouragement and your belief in this unlikely vision and journey. I couldn’t have done it without you!

  To my close supporters Mike Miller, Mickey and Teresa Dunn, Tom Patrick, Tom Sodeika, Doug DeGroote, Jim Holden, Gentry Beach, Tommy Hicks, and Jeff Webb: You keep this movement alive. Each one of you is a patriot, and you strive to make the world a better place!

  To my close friends who always have my back, Sergio Gor, Arthur Schwartz, and Andy Surabian: I will always appreciate all you do for me.

  To my fantastic publishing team at Broadside Books, especially Eric Nelson and Theresa Dooley: Thank you for believing in me and enabling me to share my vision with the rest of the nation.

  About the Author

 
; CHARLIE KIRK is the founder and president of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 1,500 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month, and according to Axios, his is one of the top 10 most engaged Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of The Charlie Kirk Show, which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Copyright

  THE MAGA DOCTRINE. Copyright © 2020 by Charlie Kirk. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Broadside Books™ and the Broadside logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.

  FIRST EDITION

  Cover design by Milan Bozic

  Cover photograph © Reuters/Yuri Gripas/stock.adobe.com

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020931369

  Digital Edition MARCH 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-297467-9

  Version 02102020

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-297468-6