Turning Point USA founder and Executive Director Charlie Kirk told Breitbart News that “the cartel of the colleges” is not happy about President Donald Trump’s recent executive order regarding free speech on college campuses, as the “intellectual tyrants” of academia “believe there’s no consequences for them, whatsoever.” Kirk offered his remarks in a Friday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
Kirk spoke to Marlow about President Donald Trump’s recent executive order calling to hold universities accountable for respecting free speech on college campuses, an order that Kirk says is an important matter for him personally, as he has championed for the president to make this move, which has been “the primary mission” of Turning Point USA.
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“These campuses have become islands of totalitarianism, it’s intellectual tyranny,” said Kirk to Marlow on Friday, “Andrew Breitbart is smiling right now from heaven at this executive order — and if you read Andrew’s book, Righteous Indignation, you read his warnings about cultural Marxism, and his analysis of the Frankfurt School. He understood what’s happening in our universities.”
“But one thing that [Andrew Breitbart] really warned us about is beyond the cancerous ideology,” added Kirk, “is the fact that if students can’t talk, if students can’t have the other opinions be expressed, then we have even greater problems than bad ideas.”
The Turning Point USA founder also noted that some critics are saying “this is a government takeover,” which Kirk reacted to by stating that it is actually the opposite of one: “We’re talking about less funding potentially going to colleges,” said Kirk, “That would be a potential government withdrawal — essentially, it’s putting forth standards.”
“These universities are so brazen,” added Kirk, “They believe there are no consequences for them, whatsoever. They are intellectual tyrants that live in their ivory towers.”
Kirk also touched upon a few staggering statistics regarding the stranglehold that “the cartel of the colleges” has on society, and on the fostering of an environment in which young people in America feel a societal pressure to enter into a four-year institution, without having any idea as to why they are doing so.
Not everyone needs to go to a four-year college to succeed in America. Maybe you can go to a two-year technical school, maybe you need to go to a community college, maybe you don’t need to go to college at all and get some technical training — These high school seniors feel so much societal pressure and so much cultural force to go to these four-year institutions, to borrow this money, and unfortunately, the national graduation rate right now is 59 percent, thank about that. That means that 41 percent of kids that enter a four-year college will not graduate — The second-largest lobby, second-best funded lobby in Washington, D.C. is the colleges and universities. They have over 1,500 lobbyists in Washington, D.C., so for the president to sign this executive order — that is not going to make the cartel of the colleges happy whatsoever.
“This is one of the key ruling class institutions — along with the tech companies — that we need to use every single facet and tool at our disposal to re-balance the playing fields,” affirmed Kirk.
The executive order was signed by the president on Thursday, and seeks to “encourage institutions to foster environments that promote open, intellectually engaging, and diverse debate, including through compliance with the First Amendment for public institutions and compliance with stated institutional policies regarding freedom of speech for private institutions.”
The order, Kirk says, has been “long overdue.”
Kirk also commented on Ivanka Trump’s recent statements on America’s addiction to four-year universities, saying: “what I love about what the administration is doing through job training and to the changing of the narrative — and Ivanka has been critical in this — is that not everyone needs to go to a 4-year college to succeed in America.” Kirk points out that this fact is illustrated by the national college graduation rate, which is only 59 percent.
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