High School and College Speech Codes Discussed at Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Women's GOP Event

Charlie Kirk, 21-year old founder of Turning Point USA, spoke at Gorton Community Center Wednesday June 10 to a youthful crowd of local college and high school students and many parents about TPUSA’s efforts in registering youth to vote and informing them about free market values, fiscal responsibility and their right to challenge attempts to indoctrinate them at college and high school campuses.

Noting Milton and Rose Friedman’s seminal work, “Right to Choose,” Kirk spoke of the eagerness of many college students to learn about fiscal responsibility and free markets. He also presented TPUSA’s “Big Government Sucks” campaign, noting the concept resonated with youth and helped build coalitions of libertarians, conservatives, Republicans and Democrats around the common theme that, as government grows, personal freedom shrinks. He cited as examples the NSA’s indiscriminate email spying program and Obamacare. He noted TPUSA activists also distribute copies of the U.S. Bill of Rights and Constitution on college campuses, and Kirk’s Power Point presentation showed humorous pictures of students reading the Bill of Rights with facial expressions ranging from shock to delight: Kirk said that many had never realized the rights they possessed as American citizens as they’d never been taught them in high school.

Answering audience questions, Kirk also noted that traditional defenders of contemporary First Amendment freedoms---liberals---were of a different breed than those of the mid-20th century. In his experience organizing hundreds of college campuses, he found that tolerance for views that were not politically correct was virtually non-existent and that old-fashioned tolerance of all viewpoints in the market place of ideas had been replaced by indoctrination and the politics of personal destruction for those holding the unorthodox view.

Kirk spoke of his efforts in building TPUSA from nothing to representation on over 800 high school and college campuses in three short years, going from two to 41 paid employees with a large budget funded primarily by private donations. Denied his dream for a West Point appointment after high school when a substantially less qualified but politically acceptable person was chosen, Kirk turned his energies to TPUSA while attending college.

Special guests included GOP state senate candidate, Lake County Young Republican President and Turning Point USA protégé, Blake Hudson, and Willard Helander, former Lake County Clerk. Hudson, standing to the right of Charlie Kirk in the picture accompanying this story, spoke briefly.  He noted the focus on character, integrity and sound thinking in public life was “not a moment, but a movement.” He echoed Kirk’s call for an engaged youth movement based on critical thinking, adding his own opinions about the importance of personal integrity.

Kirk’s rapid fire delivery, sharp wit, command of the issues, and most significantly, the leadership skills displayed at such a young age make him truly a man to watch. He concluded his remarks noting that TPUSA was called the “MoveOn.org of the Right”, but that his goal was to make MoveOn.org the ”TPUSA of the Left”.

Hosts for the event included the Lake County Young Republicans, Mark Shaw, State Central Committeeman (GOP) and the Women’s Republican Club of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff. For more information, see: www.womensrepublicanclub.com

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