CPAC: Charlie Kirk says American citizens are beginning to rise up against authoritarianism

Charlie Kirk took the stage at CPAC on Thursday, praising Governor Ron DeSantis and the free state of Florida. He spoke to the ideas of the conservative movement, which are the foundation of the work he does with TPUSA.

The values Kirk supports recall an older version of conservatism, one focused on social issues and culture, and not one that is particularly concerned with fiscal policy, or even politics.

Kirk believes he is fighting for the soul of America and of western civilization, and at the root of his efforts is a desire to see strong families raising children that will love the nation, united under God, and with loyalty to America and her citizens.

"There's something special happening in America right now," he said. "And a year ago, when we met, things looked pretty bad." Kirk sees reason for hope over the past 12 months. Pushback against the woke school curriculum of critical race and gender theory, protest against Covid restrictions, and seeing Americans start to fight back for their rights and right to self-determination.

The restrictions that were imposed on Americans have done the reverse of what they were intended to do, Kirk said, and Americans have instead pushed back against the authoritarian regime that sought to steal their rights. He spoke against social media and legacy media outlets that seek to suppress and censor dissenting voices under the rubric of misinformation and disinformation.

He said that it would have been easy for Americans to give up, but "the opposite happened, and the people in charge of our government, Hollywood, media, they couldn't really understand why all of a sudden moms and dads kept showing up at school board meetings across the country," Kirk said. "They couldn't understand why, all of a sudden, people started to run for precinct committee positions. They couldn't understand why the energy of the conservative movement only increased when they control everything."

"And what we saw over the last year is the regime controlling every aspect of our life. Literally, whether or not and how you can breathe, vaccination status…" Kirk stated unequivocally that no one should be vaccinated if they don't want to be.

He spoke to the "unprecedented rise of the citizen in the last 12 months, and the regime doesn't know where this is coming from."

"They're bracing for impact," Kirk said.

"I want to be part of an extinction event for the political woke left," he said, to put them in a state of irrelevancy for the foreseeable decades.

Concerns about American society, he said, are far more pressing than the perpetual crisis condition promulgated by America's leaders would have us believe. Drug addiction, overdoses, the inability of America's emerging adults to buy homes, start families, and stake a claim to the promise of America, as well as social ills like gender ideology are a greater plague than Covid, Kirk intimated.

Kirk spoke to the problems of despair in the US, and said that we need to hold our leaders accountable. For Kirk, the concerns of the US-Mexico border is more essential than anything happening in Europe, and the issues in the US need to be dealt with.

For Kirk, conservatives should be backing families, encouraging homeownership, having children, and strong marriages.

"We must demand from our leaders clever priorities of what actually matters," he said. "We have a choice."

He spoke against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his actions against his own citizens, calling it "a moral outrage and a human right abuse."

"I don't want to win elections, that's fine, that's a small thing, elections come and go. I want to win civilization. I want to live in a country that's free. I want to live in a country I recognize. I want our leaders to care more about you and our fellow countrymen and our fellow citizens than some sort of abstract ideal or some sort of undefined GDP number," he said.

"The conservative movement is trending," he said noting that it will represent "60,70, 80 percent of voters of all backgrounds and all colors. It's going to require our leaders, and you, to make sure they do it. The citizen is rising everybody, and the regime is falling. We're going to win."