(PM.) Speaking from the first day of Turning Point USA’s Americafest in Phoenix, Arizona, organization president Charlie Kirk spoke on the importance of having a “coherent vision” in the conservative movement.
Addressing the excited room of attendees, Kirk marked the start of the weekend’s conference by poking fun at Maricopa County and their election day troubles.
“One of my favorite takeaways from today, is to show that Maricopa County, you can get people through lines effectively and print badges… Maricopa County, if you wanna learn how to get 10,000 people through a line and print something with almost no problems come to a Turning Point USA event. That’s all I gotta say.
Thanking the crowd for making the journey to the conference, Kirk continued, “you see, we’re in a very important time in our nation’s history, and we as a movement, as a conservative movement, need a vision. Without a vision the people perish, is what it says in the Scriptures.”
“I have the opportunity to travel the country and talk to lots of different people, and we have been lacking a coherent vision of what we as conservatives believe in and what we are fighting for,” said Kirk.
“Now, we know what the bad guys are fighting for. And. a movement with no vision, we’re noting more than just a gang, just a random group of people with kind of shared ideas and shared values, but a vision, something that we are aiming for, something as a movement that we strive for, that we for, all of a sudden, will make everything make sense again,” Kirk added.
Kirk continued on to say that there are people within the conservative movement taking “bold and courageous” steps like homeschooling their children, running for their local school board or for government office, or knocking on doors for the midterm elections.
“This room is the room that always goes the extra mile, but one of the things we have to take a step back and say well, what exactly are we fighting for? What does success look like as a vision and as a movement?”
Kirk said that the vision of “our opponents and the Marxist totalitarian left is filled with venom, hatred, darkness, resentment, arrogance, and despair,” and that “they want power, they want control,” taking over schools and institutions.
“One of the reasons why I believe that Turning Point USA is the most important organization in America is because we go to places where there are not a lot of conservatives. At Turning Point USA, we play offense with a sense of urgency to go to places that we are in the ideological and philosophical minority and guess what, we are not always welcomed when we go to these college campuses, but we are going to win when we go to places wthat we are not always welcomed, and we go there anyway,” he continued, noting the case of a campus stop in New Mexico.
