After failing to find a transcript of this speech, it seemed necessary to make one. Assembled from google's speech-recognition snippets, punctuation added, very lightly edited, verbal tics ("like") are mostly preserved. (Please comment or email with corrections.)
Young people would be well advised to read/listen to the middle third ("Okay so the first thing to know is that's what's going on ..." to ... well, as long as your interest keeps you going. Or if you only have a few minutes, skip to "So how do wise people live?...". Excellent life advice for these turbulent times.
Now sit back in your coziest chair, get a BIG cup of hot chocolate, and enjoy this modern classic: Tucker Carlson's TPUSA Student Action Summit speech in December 2020.
This is so funny. Thank you, well I love you too thank you thank you guys thank you. This is it's so funny. I never go anywhere, I literally never leave my house, and I haven't been in a room with other people. I'm not often called sexy where I live, um but thank you thank you for having me.
This is such a trip and and I'm really grateful I'm grateful to be here. I never leave, I never give a speech, I never do anything, so um when Charlie asked me, yeah it sounds like a pretty fun job. Um, so I was thinking I live on the west coast of Florida, and I was thinking as I was driving yeah, (go West coast of Florida baby!). It really is kind of the freedom state. But I was thinking about, as I do every day, like what exactly is going on here in America. And I'm not you know we do a show every night, so I'm paid to think about it. But there's so much happening that it's hard sometimes to get the overview, when you're caught up in all the details, and people are you know texting you this outrage or this abomination and you sort of don't have a chance to pause and kind of add them all up. I grew up in a world where thing. I'm 51, so America in my youth was really simple ideologically. There was the Soviet Union which was left, and then there were the normal people who were right. And one side was for centralized control and communism and the other side was for market capitalism and freedom and Christianity and you know all the good things. It was left versus right, and so it's with that framework that I kind of assess what's going on in the world.
And I began to change my mind Memorial Day weekend when everything started to fall apart, and this group of people oh yeah this group of people, kind of like all of a sudden flooded in the streets and started breaking things. And so I called a bunch of friends of mine who were there, covering this, and I said "you know who are these people?". I mean there was this well-publicized death of somebody in Minneapolis, and that was the pretext, but obviously there was something bigger going on here. And I called a bunch of friends who were covering this, and I said okay what exactly is going on why are they breaking things and setting things on fire and hurting people? And he's like, well, these are avowed marxists, and they're taking on capitalism, and then allied with them is another group that hates law enforcement and they're trying to end the rule of law.
And I'm like okay that makes sense, like you know, radical leftist nihilists whatever, but they have an agenda they're against capitalism and they're against law enforcement. Okay I mean, I'm not for that, but it kind of made sense, so I watched this thing unfold over the over the subsequent weeks. And I noticed something really weird. The people who were against capitalism were destroying the smallest businesses in the country. They were going after like pizza places and liquor stores and camera shops, assuming any of those still exist and dry cleaners and car dealerships. And I was like, okay, you know I guess that's capitalism, but in 2020 we have bigger examples like Apple and Google right? The richest people in the world are capitalists, purportedly they're the tech monopolies, and not only are they not getting their windows broken, they're funding it! It's like, wait a second, how are the anti-capitalist people ignoring the actual capitalist?
And then I look over at the other group and they're like we're against law enforcement. I'm like all right, well you can make the case that like not all law enforcement is great. There's the biggest law enforcement agency in America, it's called the FBI, and I think you could make a solid case that, you know, they do good. But they've also you know done some things for which they should be deeply ashamed, because they were abuses of power and including things that i saw personally. So if you're against law enforcement, I suppose you're going to be calling the FBI to account for its abuses of power, but no. Instead they went after the beat cop. The guy who's paid 55-grand a year to trudge through the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country, arrest criminals, help old ladies get cats out of trees, or whatever. Like do the retail end of law enforcement, this is a guy who may not have a college degree, who's not making any money, who has precisely zero power in American society. And this guy is the villain just like the random cop? Trust me if you intersect with American law enforcement, you hope it's a random cop and not the FBI. I mean he may take your beer but he's not going to tap your phone, or put you in prison for the rest of your life for a thought crime.
But for some reason the people who were against law enforcement completely ignored this and I began to realize maybe what they're saying isn't what they actually mean. Maybe they're not telling the whole truth about their motives. Maybe the people who say they're against capitalism aren't. Maybe the people who say they're against law enforcement aren't. Maybe this is part of a larger trend where the big things are getting bigger, the powerful are getting more powerful, and everybody else is getting the shaft. Maybe what we're watching is a consolidation of power and maybe the people who have it are using these forces as their kind of shock troops in order to get what they want. So if you're a huge corporation, you want less competition. Monopoly is what you want to be, and maybe they're paying for these vandals because they know in the end it'll make them more powerful.
This occurred to me in like June because I'm slow, and then I see the numbers. I see that the money numbers which are always like some of the most revealing numbers, but they're the ones we never talk about, because somehow that's like irrelevant. Because when everything is political and everything is ideological, you kind of miss the obvious points which is, if you want to know who's in favor of the way things are look at who's getting richer. And you see the numbers and you see that Jeff Bezos who has been paying for this has benefited wildly from it. You think, wait a second, maybe there's something else going on so that's a long preamble to the following point.
I used to see the world in terms purely left and right and I was and will remain on the right but I'm starting to think that's not exactly the way I need to understand what's happening in the world. Maybe it's a matter of the big versus the small, the powerful versus the powerless, the corporate versus the independent, and that's another way to put it, the good versus the bad. People who want to think for themselves versus the people who want to demand you think the way they tell you to think.
Maybe that's what it's actually about, so then I reassessed a lot of the things that I think are the worst about American society and i began to realize those things aren't necessarily left-wing values. They're corporate values. So if you're running a company, what do you want? Obedient workers. You want people whose first loyalty is to you, who show up on Monday morning, who work through the weekend, who give you their all, who give you their lives, and in return you give them a paycheck, but you give them no loyalty and no promise of long-term commitment. It's a continuous one-night stand. You're just hooking up. You're being used.
That's true. Contrast that with the relationship you have with the people you love: your best friends, your family, the people with whom you have like sincere intimate personal relationships. They're there for you, no matter what. And when you get the diagnosis, or you get laid off from your job, or when things turn bad, when you have to wear a mask as you ride your bike, or the world falls apart, those are the people who are there for you. Those are the people who care about you, who actually care about you. They're not the ones who are telling you "oh we really care about you because of the way you look and we're on your side". These are the people who are actually on your side, who are going to loan your money or let you sleep on the couch or talk you through a tragedy in your own life. Those are the relationships that matter. They're the only relationships that matter and they're almost never the relationship you have with your employer.
If you work for a huge company, I'm sorry it's just true, so what you're seeing and you see it up and down American society is the triumph of the values of those people over the values that we hold and that made this country great. And if you're wondering why American families are falling apart, and if you're wondering why every directive you hear from washington divides you from your family that's why. Because they want your first loyalty to be to them so the question in a circumstance like this is: what do you do about it.
How do you respond to it? And the first the first thing you need to know is what's actually happening. This is not your enemy, as horrible as they are, is not some crazed ideologue wearing black, spray-painting statues. That person is loathsome and should be in jail. Trust me, and I call for that nightly. But your actual enemy is the person who's funding him and making that kind of behavior possible and is doing it for a very specific reason to tear down the past. To destroy the past.
Now why do they want to destroy the past? Because when you destroy the past, you eliminate all reference points. If you have no idea what came before, you you have no idea what normal is. And you cannot understand the consequences of what's happening now, if you can't look to the past and understand the consequences of the same behavior in another time. Right, the root of wisdom is knowing what happened before. I mean that's the road map, so when you destroy that, you have an entire country that is very easily manipulated.
Okay so the first thing to know is that's what's going on. The second thing to know is that small is almost always better than big. That's the truth. The circle of people in your life who care enough about you to help you when things go wrong is really small. There are a lot of people you're friends with on instagram or facebook or whatever in the fake digital world that we've been lulled into participating in, but the actual number of people who will take affirmative steps to help you is very very small. It's not 350 million. That's how many people are in this country. It's not seven billion. It's like eight. So your loyalty always has to be to them, to your family, and your closest friends, above anything else, period. And anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that your real loyalty has got to be to some larger group of people, some political group, or some group of people who look like you? Give them the middle finger! Those are your enemies. I'm serious, I'm serious. They are trying to destroy the fortifications that will protect you through life, which are the people you love and who love you back. Okay so that's the first thing to know. Small is always better.
Be distrustful of concentrations of power. They can be easily misused. This is like a basic life point that we seem to have forgotten. They can be easily misused and often are, so if something is enormous, it's a threat to you, period. Whether it's a giant boulder you're standing under for your christmas card picture that could topple over and flatten you, or whether it's google the largest and most powerful company in human history. Google is a threat to you because it's so powerful it's a greater threat than the US government. It has more power, and it uses it in ways that are hidden, and it is totally unaccountable to you. As frustrating as the federal government can be, and I spend my life raging against it, at least on a theoretical level you could vote them out. Power from a company like google is completely resistant to your views. They don't care what you think and they have no reason to care. What you think, "okay so here's the way I think about it all the stuff is going on", there's very little of it that we can actually control.
Let's just be totally honest about that. And by the way you should always keep that in mind through life. You have less control than you think you do. You didn't control your birth. You can't add an hour to your life. You just can't - no one can - no one's ever been able to know and ever will be able to do so. If you want to be wise and make clear-headed decisions, just remember there are a lot of things you can't control. Focus on the things that you can control. It's like the famous neighbor quote. And the thing that you can control is whether your personal life is happy, productive, and has inherent meaning, period.
And no one wants to say that, because it never increases their power to encourage you to have a normal happy personal life. It never increases their power at all, in fact. It detracts from their power, because you're going to wind up finding someone, getting married, having kids, and be more loyal to them than to your political or corporate leaders. And that's why they work against it. In fact that is the main threat to their power. And if you're wondering why big companies across the country are now offering to freeze the eggs of their female employees, it's not because they're compassionate. It's because they're demanding that you give them the best years of your life to serve them. That you put off the thing that gives our lives meaning above all else, which is passing on your genes - having children - that's the core meaning in life. That you put that off, so you can sell more widgets for them and juice the stock price. And in return you get what? Nothing. They don't know your last name, but they'll freeze your eggs, because we're a compassionate enlightened company. Yeah, no, because they want total control. And it shows you why are the big companies so in favor of social policy that degrades the family.
Pretending that men and women are exactly the same - which they are not - they are not - they're very different and they need each other they need each other in order to be whole. That's the truth. They fit together like a jigsaw puzzle physically and spiritually for a reason, which is they complement each other. They need each other. We need each other, and anyone who tells you we don't is your enemy. So the point in case this isn't clear is that what actually matters, I mean I could trust me I could bore you for four hours on the intricacy of this or that policy, but I was just brooding on this in the car drinking my Perrier. [...]
Like what actually matters? What can you actually control? Very little, and so you should focus on the things you can. And you should recognize what's going on here, and who's your friend and who's your enemy. Anyone who encourages you to think for yourself, to be more independent minded and economically independent. Not just have an independent conscience and think whatever you want, but be able to support yourself and your family. Anyone who encourages that is your friend. Anyone who tells you "you can't live without me", "you need me", "you need to be loyal to me", "give me your everything", that person is a false god and do not worship that person. I don't care who it is. It's true because there's a reason for that.
So how do wise people live? [...] I suspect there are a lot of people like under 30 here, right? Charlie made that claim. So if you're young and you're out of step politically, and clearly you are or you wouldn't be here listening to America's most despised talk show host ramble on, yeah well ... [...] If you're young and the world is changing really fast, in fact so fast that almost nobody can get a handle on where it's going or what it means, it's very hard to add it all up. It's very easy to isolate. "Here are 19 shocking things that happened yesterday." It's very hard to see the pattern in them, and most of the people who see the patterns of them are also by the way crazy, because sometimes crazy people can see the big picture. But I'm being dead serious by the way. I always have a couple crazy people on staff, because they can see things. I'm not joking. But if you're young and, like, this is all happening ... You know I've got kids. I've got one child in college, and they're going you know, and I sort of know what it means to be 21 or 18 or 25 or whatever. It's like very bewildering. So what should you do? How should you live? And so because I can't control myself, because I never can, here's my prescription.
Okay the very first thing I would do, and I try to do every single day, is remember that it ends. Like the big lie, in American life, there are many lies. But the biggest lie the one that has the deepest roots, and the worst effects, is that no one ever dies. It's like the one topic. You could get up here and like tell you about my sex life, not that you'd be interested, but i could get up here and say anything and like no one would be shocked. But the one thing that is completely shocking to people is that people die. Like that's the verboten topic. Like no talking about that. It's awful, and even now I can see people sour faces like the death talk. But it is also at the same time the one thing that's true of every living person and has always been and always will be. There's an end to it.
It's the basic fact of life. It's not just a fact. It is the basic fact. This play has a finale, and it does tell you something about the people in charge that it's the one topic they never want to discuss. Are you kidding? We've got medicine for that. Why don't you exercise more. Are you joking? But none of that in the end will change that unchanging fact that's called nature. The people running our culture, our government and our economy, are fundamentally at war with nature. I mean that in the broadest sense. They may claim to be environmentalists, they don't ever go outside by the way, none of them. They can be environmentalists if they want but they are fundamentally at war with nature.
The basic fact of nature is that life begins it has an arc and then it ends. So what does that mean for you? Doesn't mean be depressed. It means face it head on, and think through the implications. There are many. Here's the most basic. You don't have the time you think you do. Don't waste time. That's the bottom line: don't waste time and I mean literally not a second.
Looking back on my life, which I try not to do, but I've wasted like a ton of money in my life, a ton. I've been out of money because I'm not good with money and I'm not good at math, okay. And i've never really regretted that. I mean at certain times i've been concerned about it, but i've never been like "oh I wish I hadn't ordered you know like an extra french toast from room service", because the truth is I liked, you know, I enjoyed it.
I do not regret any of that. The only thing I regret in retrospect, is wasting time. That is a bitter pill that is tough to acknowledge. I wasted time because you can't get that back. That's a cliche that old people drop on you, and you're like "all right grandpa, right life goes fast I bet when you're 80". But the truth is they're right! That's the one thing that old people say that you should definitely believe. If you are lucky, you will be older. before you think, and if you're unlucky hit by a bus walking out of the convention center. It's just true, sorry. So back up from that. Do not waste time.
So what does that mean? It doesn't just mean work harder at your job. It means don't delay adulthood. Don't delay full life. The most upsetting trend from my perspective in a company full, a country full of upsetting trends, is this idea that I'm going to get married and have kids after I'm a success at work. Because like the people at work are gonna like help you succeed, so you can get married and have kids and leave the company, yeah I don't think so. No, they're gonna get what they can from you. And maybe they're nice people, maybe they're not, but their interests are not the same as your interests. Your interest is to participate fully in human life, in your life. To be fully human. To experience it to the maximum extent you possibly can, for the time that you have. That's the truth.
So my advice is exactly the opposite. And I mean this with heartfelt sincerity. You should get married as soon as you can, and you should do it while you're too young. And then after you get married too young, you should have more kids than you can afford. Okay and then, after you do that, you should try to get a job for which you are not qualified. Okay. You should jump face first into the pool of life. I mean it. I mean it put a blindfold up in fact. Get up on the roof, I'm serious, get to the back of your double wide. You got an above ground pool right there, and just run right off the end like that. That's you hitting life face first.
Will it hurt? Yeah yeah, but you gotta enter the pool. You do and every day that you delay that, you will regret. Trust me, trust me. Seek meaning. Seek intensity. Meaning comes from other people. I spent my whole life debating ideology and politics, and I'm deeply interested in it, and I'm deeply ideological. I don't say that as a point of pride. I say that as a confession. I think you can be too ideological, but I think in the end, and I mean literally at the end, you will not look back and say, you know I just wish they'd lowered the marginal tax rate by six percent, my life would have been a victory. You're just not going to say that. I don't think anyone in human history - I don't think hayek said that on his deathbed. Maybe he did I wasn't there, but the point is everything that you do now should be serving in a positive way your long-term interest, which may not be that long term. Like do it now! And anything that anesthetizes you, or keeps you from fully experiencing the only life that you have - stop it! I totally mean that.
I'm like the only adult who's against weed. Everyone loves the weed and everyone I know smokes the weed I'm sure you guys all smoke the weed. I'm sure you get your dab pens right now in your pockets. Every time I say this at like a dinner party, everyone looks at me like "oh I thought you were cool!", "oh god the anti-drug guy again!". Okay I'm actually not. I don't have an ideological problem with it. I have a practical problem with it, and anything that causes you to experience life less deeply. Anything that causes you to miss the amazing show going on right now in front of you is stealing from you. It's stealing your life and it's not just weed. That's just the beginning and I don't want to get like creepy about it, or too specific but there are a lot of things that people are into now. A lot of them digitally that are detractors from the intensity of life, right. They make it easier to pretend that everything's fine, and they also make it harder to acknowledge how amazingly wonderful everything is. They dull you. You don't want to be dull. You want at the end to say, holy smokes that was ridiculous, like some of it was amazing, some of it was like shockingly bad, like I can't believe that happened, but I was there for all of it!
You don't want to wake up in the third act, and be like, "what the hell just happened?", you know what I mean? You don't want to be the guy snoring in the third row, which I have done. So live it, experience it to the maximum possible extent that you can. But always remember, the measure always is how are the people around you. Those eight people you love most and who love you back critically - and don't lie to yourself - a lot of the people who are on tv, and trust me, I know them all, who claim they really love you: they don't know your last name they don't know your first name they don't love you. They may agree with you, they may want your help, your support, your ratings. This is true for politicians. They want your votes. Apple wants your money, but they definitely don't love you. Trust me, I know them, so take stock of the people who do love you and focus all your attention on them. Because that's all we can control.
I look out every night, every night at like five, I get a cup of coffee, ipad to the kitchen, I get a cup of coffee, then I go back to my bedroom where I have a desk. The dogs are there, my wife's coming in and out, and I start writing the script. Every night, five nights a week, and usually around 5:30 when I'm like through the second paragraph I'm like man, things are bad. I always have the same thought every night. I'm like boy the people who seek the destruction of the things I love, my family, my country, my conscience, the ones who are trying to get me to repeat things that I don't believe, the ones who are forcing me or trying to to lie in public, the ones who are getting me to dance like a monkey.
I'm serious, some of the things they ask you to do are so preposterous, the only explanation is they want to see if they can make you do it. No, it's totally true! That's what they're saying it's all about their power. Like I wonder if we can get the public to do this. Yeah, can we get them, you know, not just wear masks and elevators, fine, can we get a guy who's on a kayak alone in the middle of the pacific ocean to wear a mask? As if he's going to get infected by the seals. Can we get him? Do you think we can? No we can't make him do that, come on, are you joking? Oh yeah we can! Here's what we'll do, we'll arrest him when he gets back on the beach. And we'll invite a news crew to film it, so everyone else will know you better. Do exactly what they tell you to do, or you're going to jail. That's not, and by the way I'm not minimizing covid, I'm highlighting what's actually going on. Which is a legitimate tragedy, leveraged for the personal power of a small group of people. I mean obviously, so just every night I'm sitting at my desk writing this stuff, and I'm like "man, I don't know like how many free-minded people are there left". Actually, I mean I do think this like it's kind of dark, but I'm alone, the dogs never say anything, and I'm like really, "can you win?".
I mean it's not like two sides sort of facing off against each other. It's like actually, no no joke, no exaggeration, it's the most powerful people in the world, all aligned. I sound like a lunatic when I say this, but it's measurably true. The last election was a perfect example. I mean the numbers tell the story. You don't need to be some late-night radio nutcase. You just read the numbers. Where'd the money come from? How much did one side have? How much did the other side have? Who gave it? It's the most powerful people in the world, all on one side, and I think that's terrible for the country. I really believe in actual diversity, where there's like a robust debate, where two sides each have a position. We kind of talk it out and like you know, one wins but it's a pretty fair fight. That's not where we are now. So I look at this and I'm like, "oh man is it hopeless?". Like can you actually beat google, the government of china, and goldman sachs? I don't know. You got to try. You know, you got to get out of bed in the morning, and put your gloves on, and go for it, right. You got to tell the truth.
By the way, in the end, no amount of money, and no amount of praise from the world's dumb people, no amount of fake awards, the stupid little merit badges they give, the pulitzer prize, the nobel prize, "I've got a Rhodes scholarship!"... Oh shut up, it doesn't mean anything. "I got into Princeton!" Oh, be quiet, no that means anything and none of that is worth betraying what you know to be true. Like that is that is real. None of that. I don't care how much they pay you, I don't care how many of your friends on facebook think it's cool for you to repeat the lyrics to their songs when you don't believe them. I don't care it, is not worth it. Never betray your conscience. And by the way, you don't have to agree with me, maybe you sincerely disagree with me, and I have friends who do sincerely, but every person I love and talk to and take seriously is a person of principle who doesn't lie about what he or she believes. Period. Period.
That is essential, but let's say even if you do that, and you are true to yourself and what you believe to your conscience and your god into the ones you love, they win anyway. Like maybe they continue to get more powerful, and maybe the pizza place doesn't come back and maybe in the end Jeff Bezos sells you your pizza. It doesn't taste quite as good, but he runs the pizza business now, and everything else. What if that happens? The truth is you're still in charge of what goes on in your head, and you're still in charge of the relationships with the people you love. That is what you're in charge of. So I always think to myself: even if in the end they win, and in my case, you know, just being honest probably not going to be treated that well. If they win, to put it mildly, but even if I'm living in a double-wide trailer in a state I've never been to in the middle of a corn field living on Social Security, I'm still going to be living with my wife and my kids are still going to love me. And I mean it all that matters, all that matters, is your family. That's it.
So I know this is a little bit harder. It's a little bit easier if you're 51, and you have a job. And it's a little bit harder if you're not, and you're 22, and you're like looking at this world and asking yourself like h"ow do I fit in this?". How do I end up building a life like the ones that my parents had? How do I in a world that clearly hates me and my values, how do I succeed? And this is something that, you know, I think about a lot, just because I have all these kids and because you know I was a young person. And like, there's a lot of anxiety in the heart of every 22 year old, because you've got to kind of figure out how to live in a society that you don't control and you have to prove yourself. And I guess my one piece of advice would be, if you can just ignore the standards that they set, you don't have to participate in the society that people who hate you and your values created, that's the truth. I never thought I'd be standing on a stage suggesting that people opt out of the popular society, but that is exactly what I'm suggesting. I mean it. I mean it.
I read that there was a piece in the New York Post yesterday by a kid who some of my children know actually, who had gone to Princeton for three years. He went to you know some expensive boarding school, then he went to Princeton. He was there for three years. He wrote a piece of the New York Post and he's like, you know the whole thing was shallow and basically I didn't learn anything. I just I went there to get the merit badge of going to Princeton. It turns out everyone else at Princeton was there for the same reason. They just want to work at some soulless finance company and get rich, get a house in Aspen and call it a day. And I found that totally shallow and disgusting and it violated my values. The whole thing was a sham, like this supposedly impressive meritocracy that they created wasn't impressive at all. The closer I got, I realized that all these people are supposed to be really smart, were actually completely banal, and ordinary, and was hoping that nobody noticed there were no original thinkers at all. Everyone was just a drone. As soon as I moved to Australia, so I was like, you go drop out Princeton kid and then the last graph, he's like but I'm going back to Princeton because you know got to get a Princeton degree. And I'm like, really, no, you don't need to go back to Princeton, and by the way YOU don't need to go to Princeton either.
If you believe the system is kind of a joke then don't participate in it. I mean that. And what's going to happen? Is this another reason that no one my age ever wants to have dinner with me, because I always say this at the table, and they're all deeply offended? But the truth is that the entire American upper middle class or professional class is completely vested in these symbols of attainment of achievement, which don't actually connote real attainment or achievement. In other words going to Princeton doesn't make you smart it doesn't mean you learned anything. It just meant you follow the rules the very narrow specific rules designed to make you a perfect bank employee, and maybe that's what you want to be, and if you want to work at Goldman go ahead and go to Princeton and that's awesome and invite me to ski at Aspen next year.
Great, but let's say you don't want that don't participate in it. Well, the problem is that when people start saying that, it really offends their parents, because and I'll tell you exactly why. Not because most parents believe their kids are learning anything in college, because they know they're not, but because I mean let's be honest, Hayden's at Duke, just you know what I mean that's like the kind of thing that every parent wants to say at a cocktail party. Yeah Hayden's at Duke, he's on the lacrosse team, I mean you know got a kind of perfect score in the SAT. I mean he's pretty bright. I'll be honest, like maybe you have to be 50 to know what that means, but trust me that's the goal of everybody my age is to be like Hayden's at Duke. You know he got into Penn but we just felt like Duke was was better. There's no reference at all to what Hayden is learning at Duke, by the way. Nothing, not one thing, and instead is like being taught to hate America, hate his parents, hate the system that made Duke possible, and no one wants to admit it. So clearly this whole system has run its course. So it's very easy to say that, the system is stupid, and we need to fix it, and higher education should be impressive, and it was with the GI bill and we trained generations of Americans to you know be more productive and happier and better compensated than their parents. That's all true.
But at a certain point, when we all know this and those of you who are in college already know it very well, you're living it. At a certain point, it got completely subverted by bad people, and the rest of us who are the ones who send the money in to keep this whole ludicrous operation moving, like refused to acknowledge it. And we're like, we just want Hayden to get into Duke. Let's just be clear, you know what it means. We can tell our friends and we allowed it to continue. And the truth is, and you know this, there's no fixing it. Now, if you want to be a veterinarian or an engineer or whatever, there are all kinds of you know higher education paths that are necessary. I mean if you're gonna you know drill my bicuspids, I want you to go to dental school. I'm not you know I'm not against education, but the liberal arts conventional "I want a communications degree from Penn State?". No you don't. I'm sorry you don't. You don't, and it will be worth nothing. You're going to be deeply indebted, and there's a very good chance that it will hurt you. It is the truth, that it will hurt you.
And that's the last thing I'll say. But so I've thought this for a long time. No one I know my age agrees with me. They think I'm crazy for saying this. So I had one of my kids, had a friend who was very very bright. I always thought he was bright in high school, kid's really smart and but a little weird, but smart and very smart. And so this I said to him right before they graduated high school. I was like do you you now plan to go to college? Well yeah of course, you know that's what you do in America. You go to college. Like what, you didn't go to college? And I said all right, you know, have fun or whatever. So like two months later my son calls me, and it's like you know, he's not doing that well in college. I was like, of course he's not doing well in college, he's like an original free thinker, they hate that, that's like the last thing you can be in college. Someone with unauthorized opinions who dares say them out loud, like, not allowed! And so I called the kid and I was like, how's college? "Well I don't really like it", and I was like, "you know you've been there for three months or whatever you should drop out and come work for me". And he's like "well I'm only 18". I was like "I don't care", and so he did. Now I'm not gonna lie, he probably will see this, and I'm deeply embarrassed but the truth is that was five years ago. He still works for me, and no I'm just saying like he turned out to be, you know, one of the best people that we had.
Now the truth is, the job that I put him in was perfectly suited for his natural ability, which is really important and no one ever says that either. One of the big lies of higher education is, you can like go to school and learn to do something that you have no basic aptitude in. That's a total lie. You could send me to 20 years of MIT, I would never understand physics. I just wouldn't I can't do math, I'm dyslexic. Do the thing for which you're naturally suited. Pay attention to who you are. Do the thing that you are naturally good at, that you love, without being prompted that you would do for free. That's totally true. Don't lie to yourself. The biggest lie is, oh well you can be whatever you want to be. What? No you can't. You can take the skills that god gave you, and you can use them to maximum effect, that's true. So anyway, this kid and I probably shouldn't even be saying this because unfortunately it's 100% true, but this kid had the skills required for the job that we put him in. And he's turned out to be like an utter star, and he's 24, married, and has like you know four years of work experience that no one his age has. He ran with it.
So you can't tell me there's a school in the world, that for the price, will give you the benefit of four years of being in the right job. Now you have to find someone who's going to hire a high school graduate, who you know drinks a lot, and you have to find a job that suits you. But if you can, you should. Just because they do it this way doesn't mean you need to keep doing it this way. And just because they require you to violate your deepest held beliefs, the things that you really care about, your loyalty to your family, to your faith. Just because they require you to violate all of that, doesn't mean you have to. You do not have to, and you should not, and I don't care how many guidance counselors tell you well you got to do this. No, I don't, no I don't.
The only way we're going to live in a free country is if the people who live in the country act like it's a free country. That's the truth. It is the truth and no one you vote for can make it a free country. What a lie that is, and I like some politicians. Not very many, but I know them all, that's for sure. I mean I've lived in DC for 35 years. And some are better than others, and a few are pretty good, like you'd have dinner with them, very few. But all of them tell you, if you vote for me, you'll be freer and happier. And that's a complete lie. That's a complete lie. Only you can be free and make yourself free, and the only way you do that is by living as a free person, period. And if you have to take less money, or move to some place you've never been before in order to do that, you should do that. Don't play along.
I'm sure I'm going to wreck the light. Probably like three people in this audience were like, "yeah I'm gonna do that!". It's a huge risk to do that. I hope there are more than three, because I really really mean it. The old systems are going away. Don't play along anyway. Sorry, now I'm rambling, and I'm out of time, but because my thoughts are so ...
Okay okay, hold on, this guy, where's the weird kid has been heckling me? Do you have a question? [...] I'll take one question. [...] so thank you for that. So I'll repeat the question, which is basically "they're telling you to be quiet there's an enormous amount of pressure on you to conform how do you how do you speak in a world like that". And I would say I think if that's a fair summation. I'm in a very fortunate place because I'm paid to talk, so it doesn't take a great deal of bravery when you have a tv show to say what you think, because like that's the job. And it's amazing how many people are afraid to just do the basic job, like if you have a contract to the TV network and you're lying, why are you doing that? You're under contract. You say whatever you want, and you should say exactly what you think, period. Like again back to the life is short thing. Like it's life is way too short to pretend you think something you don't. Like what's the advantage in that? Sucking up to the mob, and being like "don't really I'm on your side!". Spare me, they're going to eat you in the end anyway. Be a man, tell the truth. So but how did but that's very easy. I mean I'll just say like that's it's a pretty low risk proposition for me. I'm just being totally honest about it, like it's not. It doesn't take a lot of bravery for me to do that because that's what I'm supposed to be doing. And I'm so grateful.
For it takes a lot of bravery, if you're a young person in a system controlled by people who hate you and demand obedience, to speak up against them. It really really does. It takes too much, and people can't do it, and I understand why. And I hope I'd be brave enough to do it, but I don't know, because I'm not a kid in 2020, and I'm so grateful that I'm not. But I would say this. If you you know if you want to change things, if you really want to change things, that's honestly what it takes. It does. It doesn't take violence, it doesn't even take voting. Most of the time we don't get to vote that much, once every two years mostly. What it really takes is just small acts of personal courage and conviction, like no "I'm sorry I'm not going along with that".
I don't need to get in your face. I don't need to give you some long. I talk to people all the time like, well I would speak up, but I don't know the issues very well, or I'm not super articulate. Fine, I mean, that's okay, but it doesn't take some long soliloquy. You don't have to stand on a desk and be like you know, four score and seven years ago. You don't have to do that. Often it's enough to, like, no I can't do that, I'm sorry, I just don't believe that, and I'm not gonna pretend that I do. You know, that's all. That's all it takes. And you don't need to be confrontational about it, you don't need to be a jerk, or be loud. I mean some of the most powerful examples through history which I know you're very familiar with, have been quiet people who just refuse to obey at a certain point, because it's too much. That was certainly true in the early church. It was true the best parts of the civil rights movement. It's always been true. Like the people with deep moral courage don't need to call too much attention to themselves. They just need to stop obeying and so I would I would recommend that to everybody.
But I also recognize the costs are very real, and again it's easy for a guy with a job contract to give that advice. It's like whoa, no you know, you go first! And so that's kind of what I was getting at, in a not very articulate way, when I said "well maybe you need to opt out and go do your own thing". I mean honestly, I think it's worth it. If you look ahead in your life, and you decide what I really want to have is a stable family, and that's the only thing that's worth having. In my opinion, I know a lot of rich people a lot, and i've never met one who's like, you know, I really got happy when I got rich like it really brought joy to my life. I've never met one person who said that better than being poor. Being poor will make you unhappy there's no doubt about that. I'm not sort of romanticizing poverty, but I know for a fact that getting rich will not, it won't ring your bell. I'm sorry it just won't, and no person who's ever gotten rich will ever tell you otherwise. Not one person. So the only thing that makes you happy is a happy family. That's it and that's just true. This is not, you know, Christian evangelism. It's just like fact-based social science.
And so if you really believe that, then you need to work toward that goal, without being distracted by any other thing that gets in your way. Like anything that prevents me from, at the end of the day, having a happy family and, like, kids who love me and a spouse who loves me. Like, who doesn't want that? Everybody wants that, and we live in a world where it's like "no, it's kind of embarrassing to raise your own kids". Like what, you're not what do you do, you're not "working" if you actually talk to people in their surveys. In this, like, what do people really want? They kind of want to raise their own kids, actually they don't want to hire someone from a far away country. Do they want to raise their own kids, like, why is that? You know that's like the most natural thing there is, like why wouldn't they want that?
And guess who doesn't want you to raise your own kids, the people who are living off of your labor, the people who think you should be at work making widgets to help the stock price. Like they're not why? They don't care about your kids, by the way, their spouses are home raising their kids because they can afford they can do whatever they want, but they don't want you to. Oh I get it, you're working against the happiness of my family, and the future of my children, so you're my enemy? Actually you're my enemy. How else do you describe that? You're my enemy. You're working to hurt my family. You're making it impossible for me to raise my own children. I mean what does it take? That's like that's like a spiritual home invasion. That's like such an act of hostility, nothing else comes close to that. Calling me mean names, I don't care. Keeping me from raising my own kids, like that's a basic violation. There's nothing more basic than that. So if you really believe that, then you should just take out all the stops, and just try and live it. I mean it and you'll win in the end.
Thank you for having me.