On 9/17/25 Jordan Peterson on YouTube carried, in remembrance of the murder of Charlie Kirk, a video excerpt of an interview between them from several years ago.
Here is Jordan’s 8.33 minute video, and he writes: “We should always remember his journey, Never Forget the Path He Walked.”
My response: I did not copy out this video fully, but just curtailed it and edited it for speech and economy, while retaining the essence of the interview. I have paraphrased their conservation at times.
Charlie the 19-year-old visionary sensed that he needed not to go to college, but to go out around colleges and his pathway was to build Turning Point college chapters, to promote conservative ideas among campus youth.
Charlie: “I loved to debate via dialogue to pursue truth. Dialogue is a gift from God.”
My response: This is a profound statement: Dialogue is a gift from God. It allows human individuals as thinkers and speakers, to converse and debate, and the intellectual stimulation resulting can lead to intellectual prowess, the gift of rational consciousness, consistent with the theological claim that Jesus was the word, the Logos who became flesh, died on the cross and saved humanity from its own sins.
Humans cannot individuate, grow in goodness, philosophical consciousness, rational power, and original thinking, without dialoguing with each other—and inside oneself with oneself while maverizing-- and this is a godly, God-centered, and God-approved undertaking.
Charlie: “Conservatives rarely go on campus to reach out to college kids.”
My response: Part of Charlie’s uniqueness was his far-sighted original impulse that this was an unserved cultural niche required filling, and that he was the spokesman to carry it out, and the consequence was that he spearheaded the conservative revival of thought for American youth.
Jordan: “When I was a professor at the University of Toronto, only Communists in those days set up a card table to sway students to their cause.
Charlie: “I was deemed as unseemly by the conservative establishment because the conservative way of doing things was not to go set up a card table. It was, so to speak, only proper for a young conservative to go to college, to go to Stanford to get the highest possible education.”
My response: Charlie was unique: a young conservative from a Chicago suburb, where all young, affluent children, were expected to go to college, but he took another path. He was an autodidact reading the Great Books, or at least the classic capitalist and libertarian texts, and he was entrepreneurial and a political organizer, self-styled.
He also did the political heavy-lifting of going out and personally making contact with the young—it also cost him his life—but the lesson to take away from this is that people need personal connection as individuals to be politically energized, and the old time, out-of-touch Republicans lost interest in mixing with the masses, and thus they lost at the polls. Charlie’s political instincts were brilliant: he pressed the flesh and eventually got out the youth vote for Trump, a most impressive feat. He saved old guard Republicans party, without their appreciation or blessing.
I suspect that he enjoyed out-arguing and knowing more about culture, economics, history and politics than most of the college students whom he verbally sparred with, thereby overtly and subtly pointing out that he could out-think, out-argue, and was better educated than college-educated students, which he was.
There may have been an element of showing off in his debating, and he humiliated his assassin in a bitter encounter during which he referred to that narcissist as being a narcissist to his face in front of thousands of witnesses. The humiliated and vengeful assassin did not forgive Kirk and likely saw killing him as having the last word.
Charlie had no college degree. Not having that degree was what he wore like a badge of honor. Charlie took risks, and that courageous willingness to face the opposition openly likely contributed to his losing his life.
My take on the phenomenal Charlie Kirk rise to prominence as a leader of millions of young college and young blue-collar conservatives was that that something new, remarkable and unprecedented was born when Charlie started building Turning Point USA: something in the historical air of this time in history in America instilled in Charlie the ambition and vision be the change agent, fostering the turning point transition of young people away from Leftist or liberal populism, and back towards Christian, Western, capitalist, American, traditional political, religious and cultural values. He had influence noticeable as the increasing numbers of young people uniting and so expressing themselves, would be inspired by Kirk’s growing movement, a conservative, populist movement.
It is wholesome, democratic conservative populism, not like ideological, collectivist, conservative but actually fascist, mass movement populism in Germany in the 20s and 30s which fed into the Hitlerian rise to power at the head of the Nazi movement taking over Germany.
American liberals and Leftists who identify Turning Point as Hitlerian are slanderers, liars or just clueless.
By stark contrast, what Kirk espoused was a political return to influence by millions of young people who would politically organize within the system, and win at the ballot box, as they helped Trump become President. Charlie had a remarkable knack for organizing and getting out the vote, especially the youth vote.
Charlie: “And what I was doing unknowingly was doing something on cutting edge, was something you mentioned earlier, that conservatives have become of low trust of institutions and liberals have become of high trust of institutions and defend the FDA. They will defend the CDC, and they will defend Pfizer, and the intelligence agencies.”
My response: Charlie is noting that in the 60s the liberals were anti-establishment and distrusted institutions and those that ran them, and by 2015 liberals and Leftists dominated all institutions and were the establishment and expressed high loyalty to, confidence in and trust of institutions.
Leftists and collectivists are pro-institution when they run them, and they are anti-institution when out of power. Their dirty little secret is Leftists are never really anti-institution, though they talk that way when out of power, seeking to regain power. They always seek power, and this is the basis for whether they trust institutions or not, not because those in charge are wicked and foolish, or because institutions are intrinsically problematic—regardless of the ideology proclaimed by those in power. The larger and more widespread the institutions, the more do the rulers of these hierarchies, trend to authoritarian aims on the part of that elite in charge of the institutions.
This transition was realistically occurring, and accurately described by Charlie, and slowly young people started rebelling against and feeling alienated from the postmodernist, Leftist elite running all the institutions by 2010, even big, woke corporations.
Jordan: “Yeah, great, defend Pfizer, Big Pharma.”
Charlie: But they will. They are high trust of institutions. They find themselves defending institutions. In 1960s they were low trust of institutions. Don’t send us to war. But today, they are pro-institution. But today, and I was on the cutting edge of this.
In 2012, 2013, 2014, conservatives were still on the high trust of institutions.”
J: “Okay, so let me rephrase that slightly.”
Charlie, “Yes, so you understand.”
J: “Well, there is a conundrum because conservatives will trust institutions. That’s like an oxymoron.”
My response: This statement by Jordan is what drew my interest to this video because I had a flash of intuition that Charlie was instinctively right about something here, that Jordan with his intimidating intellectual heft, seemed to be dismissing something original that Charlie by instinct and experience had concluded. What is that?
Charlie noted that the followers of Turning Point, young college and non-college and blue-collar conservatives, have lost their trust of American institutions, which progressive elites currently running the institutions are destroying, and that is their overt intent: to wipe out the entire American way of life, all of it.
Jordan seems to accept the British, classical conservative view that institutions inherently are good and to be preserved, all conservatives need to do is throw liberals and socialists out of office to restore the British tradition.
This conservative outlook has some merit, but it is pre-Margaret Thatcher. Now British conservatism is post-Tory in part at least, as Thatcher represented the middle class, some individualism, capitalist aspirations for her people.
The residual House of Lords, the Royal Family Wing and the gentry all are more collectivist than the Thatcherite conservatives of the 70s and 80s. The George Bush Republican Party of 2002 is more collectivist and anti-populist than the more individualistic, pro-populist Turning Point youth who distrust institutions.
I am theorizing that Charlie Kirk and his unseemly young, populist conservatives intuitively understood that institutions are not to be trusted in and of themselves, because large institutions thrive best when their victim subjects are morally altruistic, nonindividuating, groupist citizens with a high tolerance for being enslaved, oppressed, tyrannized, abused and exploited, all while moaning and yet submitting to be ruled by elites running the institutions.
Jordan defines still conservatives as not just pro-tradition and capitalism but pro-established institutions. Jordan and the Tory conservatives of England regard institutions as redeemable, as inherently good, which they are not.
Kirk’s current conservatives are more conservative populist (my phrase) not old-fashioned Brahmins like the George Bush family or the British Tories of old. The Charlie Kirk grass root young conservatives are not just against the postmodernist wokesters and cultural Marxists running and wrecking our institutions and America. They also mistrust institutions as a matter of faith.
They need me to articulate their unspoken but significant disagreement with Jordan that the way to right the ship means that conservatives just need to win at the ballot box to take back the government for conservative patriotic America and the traditionalists, that once Trump was in office, then inherently good and useful institutions could be respected and trusted again, and all will be okay like before, which it never was.
I suspect that Kirk did not have the words for it (I believe uniquely I do) but his instinct about the young conservatives today having lost respect for institutions is an admission and principle on their part that institutions themselves are inherently corrupt and irredeemable—which they are. Collectivists want to preserve the institutions, as Charlie’s people want that, but in part the Turning Point youth, as individualists and neophyte egoists and nonviolent anarchists, want staunch, universal liberty, individualism, freedom and capitalism for the masses here, but not a society without institutions but a society of hierarchies greatly reduced in wealth, power, size extensive reach and control into private lives as the federal leviathan wields today.
Jordan calls him on this and says conservatives want to preserve the institutions and Jordan suggests that if the right elite can be reinstalled, then conservatives will once again trust institutions. Conservatives might indeed again trust institutions as they have in the past, but that would be a mistake. Institutions breed groupism, collectivism, altruism, and tyranny, and they breed the spread of the hierarchies and the enrichment of clout-wielding authority of power-greedy elites living off the huddled masses.
My thing is that hierarchies, institutions, elites, and centralized social structures of any kind retard and suppress the lives and prospects of individual citizens as individuating supercitzens and individuators.
Thus, we need conservative-liberal politics and free market economics, but very limited institutions, still existent to keep tyranny and evil at bay from growing in a society.
Collectivism is evil and where people are groupist, selfless and collectivist, they run in packs and there, institutions and hierarchies abound, and the people suffer.
I suspect that Charlie and his followers sensed that institutions and collectivism are inherently corrupt, and they politically want to head or inch towards My Mavellonialist take on institutions, but they would possess not the words, the theoretical framework, or concepts to articulate their disagreement against an articulate, impressive but erroneous critic like Jordan.
Jordan overwhelmed Charlie on this, but Charlie meant something very different from Jordan about conservatives not respecting institutions and this is why I am doing this video review to point out this critical development—two opposing conservative views on trusting institutions ever, even when run by benevolent elite dictators.
I wish to differentiate Jordan’s understanding of the societal role of institutions versus the populist, distrusting view which Charlie promulgated, and how the two politely disagreed about this. Jordan may have overwhelmed the younger man’s instinct that institutions are suspect and corrupt and always will be. One forgets that easily as one grows in power, rank, and social influence, like one will forsake a wary view of institutions at one’s peril.
In Jordan’s defense he seems to distrust institutions as he, Jordan, does seems to want to get rid of college institutions to build an online university so he knows that an institutions can be so corrupt that they cannot be saved.
C: “We are trying to preserve something institutions have destroyed.”
J; “Okay, so that’s the thing. So, imagine there’s a hierarchy of institutions. The fringe of the institution is more exploratory. You can move into the center which is more conservative. And you can move right to the bottom. What is it? I would say it is fundamentally religious.”
My response: Jordan is talking obscurely here without defining his terms when he suggests the bottom of the hierarchy, or any institution is religious. I am going to speculate wildly Jordan is suggesting that the common masses are always at the bottom of a hierarchy, that society and its institutions exist for their sake, and Jordan is avowing that they need God, social structure, and institutions to lead fulfilling, meaningful, productive lives, and that all of this finds its fountainhead in God’s inner message to each person, to call God into her life, to find happiness in this world and the next.
J: “As you move towards the core, you move towards what is religious.”
C: “That’s right.”
My response: It could be that moving towards the core of a hierarchy reveals the common people and that is where God resides, so if among the masses is where God and goodness are, then perhaps society should not waste its time serving elites and the ruling class at the pinnacles of hierarchies, for that is where the Devil is.
J: “So the conservative stance is not anti-institutional.”
My response: Traditional conservatives’ political stance was not anti-institutional because they were collectivists, who love hierarchies with the masses willingly and masochistically volunteering to bend the knee to conservative elite, their ruling class, their exploiters, abusers and tyrants at the top of the institutional heap.
J: “It’s a stance that is not knowing what has happened. You know in the story of Moses when he goes off to get the commandments, he is the pipeline to God. He leaves his brother in charge.”
C: “They have a rave party.”
J: “That’s exactly right They make this calf which is a materialistic object. They dance naked in the street and have an orgy. And that’s what happens to the political when it is detached from the sacred.
So, it is not that conservatives have become skeptical of institutions. It’s because, it’s that the conservatives note the institutions no longer serve the purpose for which they were established.”
My response: Jordan doubts that young conservatives today are skeptical of institutions per se, not just that elites here in charge are destroying them, and they are being misused here against the citizens and the polity. I have long suspect Jordan as a professor, a member of the educated, intellectual elite, seeks to rule the little people as a philosopher king.
Eric Hoffer famously warned that intellectuals always side with the ruling class and are its servants and co-conspirators. Intellectuals as rulers of the masses are the collectivists in charge, and they like institutions because they are the important rulers of the institutions, and through them ruling all of society. From their point of view, what is not to like about that?
Jordan claims to be for Western sovereign individuality, but he defends institutions as valuable and redeemable, and that smacks of being an altruist, a collectivist and perhaps an elitist running those institutions.
Charlie: “Chartered.”
J: “Chartered, yes, exactly. Conservatives are objecting, and that is happening everywhere, this radical secular.
It isn’t just secularization because there should be a separation between church and state. It’s not that the institutions have become secular. It’s that they have turned 180 degrees from their original orientation and now are rampaging as madly as possible in the other direction.
So, the universities no longer are the fortress wall against the barbarians. They are actually the voice of the barbarians, hence the pro-Hamas demonstrations.”
C: “The Black Lives Matter stuff, or the transgender stuff.”
J: “But we got to get that terminology exactly right because it is very dangerous for conservatives to conceptualize themselves as anti-institutional because then they become indistinguishable from the radicals.’
My response: Boy, is Jordan mistaken here. It is much more dangerous for conservatives not to conceptualize themselves as anti-institutional, rather than remaining pro-institutional, which makes them identical to and indistinguishable from the radicals. Radicals revolt and terrorize orderly society, not because they are anti-institutional. Their violent anarchy is their vehicle for their taking over the machinery of government, so these ideological nihilists can expand institutions into every nook and cranny of private life.
I believe Jordan and other classical conservatives have conflated being pro-tradition with being pro-institutional, and they are not the same at all.
Many of our Western, Christian, and American traditions are wonderful and advantageous, but it is because of the degree that they have allowed for personal liberty, personal responsibility, personal power-wielding, chasing after one’s own self-interest, working or running a business for profit—the list goes on.
We have institutions always, of course, and we should have them, but they need to be restrained, kept limited, small, powerful, efficient and hands off the lives and doings of whatever the citizens can do on their own.
Charlie and his followers likely had a sense that institutions themselves are the problem, as much as the destructive, corrupt policies and practices implemented by radicals now running most American institutions.
J: So it isn’t that (anti-institutional—Ed adds). It is returning to the things we talked about in the beginning, like the spiritual force.
And your people are going to campus saying you have lost the plot. How do you save brick and mortar institutions? I think they are dominated by people; they are aiming in the wrong direction.”
C: “They are irredeemable.”
My response: My hunch, again, is that Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA movement, is Charlie's brilliant and sound, rather unarticulated, instinctively derived concept that institutions are not to be trusted, and that a youth conservative movement, partially individualistic and egoist-thinking among is members, is the kind of conservative populism which would serve nicely to match the kind of conservative populism which I hope will arise. It is peaceful, law-abiding and change within the system, aiming to restore not overthrow our constitutional republic and free market system.
If millions of young Americans were to unite and combine their Christian faith with my Mavellonialist philosophy for growing young adults who are individuating, anarchist supercitizens, what would arise would be a powerful, durable, peaceful reform movement to rejuvenate America and make it extra great again.
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