How You're Being Written Off

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

You know, one of the things I'm always saying is that if this country is gonna get better, if this country is gonna go on the right path, we have to step up as a community. Veterans are the sleeping giant in this country, and it is time for us to step up. That's why I wanna talk to you about The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. Now you might have thought about The Citadel in the past as this corps of cadets, this military institution, but they have programs for veterans that don't involve you joining the corps of cadets, don't involve you wearing a uniform every day, and don't involve you living a military lifestyle. If you wanna do that, great.

But if that's not what you're up for right now after your military career, then you don't have to do that, and you can access some of the best programs in the world. The Citadel has some hot degrees in intelligence, tactical strength and conditioning, engineering, and project management. And there's five student type options for veterans. There's graduate college, there's evening undergraduate, there's active duty students, non cadet day program, returning cadet veterans, and online programs. The academic offerings include undergraduate, graduate, college transfer, graduate certificates, and online degrees.

Veterans have access to every single academic degree the college offers, and they have the most flexibility when it comes to their schedule. They can major in anything offered to the cadets and would take those classes during the day with the cadets. But then there's other programs offered in the evening or online and graduate programs to choose from too to make things so flexible for you. The US World and News report has named the Citadel the number one college for veterans in the South. And for veterans who choose to take classes on campus, they get to be a civilian student in a military environment.

They don't have to wear uniforms, like I said before. They don't have to join the military culture of the corps of cadets. The atmosphere is a really good transition environment from military to civilian life. There's an organic mentorship that comes from taking classes with the cadets. The cadets wanna talk to you guys.

They wanna hear your stories. They wanna know what it was actually like to be in the military. A lot of the a lot of these men and women are gonna go on to serve as officers in the military, and they're gonna exact change. And they need to hear from you guys. They you also get access to The Citadel's alumni network.

Like I said, this is one of the most illustrious institutions in the world. And when you join the Citadel and you graduate, you're part of their alumni network. That includes so many leaders. It includes so many business leaders, so many leaders from the military, and so many leaders from the government. The college's core values of honor, duty, and respect align with veteran culture.

They align with who you are, and it's something that you're not gonna get anywhere else in this country. There is tons of special assistance for veterans at The Citadel. And whether you're a veteran or active duty military personnel, you can take advantage of these programs. You also get access to the veteran student success center, the career center, the academic success center, the student veteran association, and all campus clubs. If you wanna play rugby, you could do that.

If you wanna you wanna lift weights, you could do that. You get access to everything that the students get. There's fellowship opportunities. There's tons and tons of financial assistance. So if you're interested in getting a degree from The Citadel and building your life, head over to citadel.edu/veterans.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. And that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast. My name is Chris Albert, and this podcast is meant to deliver tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to The US military veteran community to help you to live your best lives. And if you're not a veteran, stick around because no matter what, you're still gonna get lessons that are going to help you to succeed. Today, I wanna talk about what I see going on out there in the world, in the news, in the media, in popular culture.

And, you know, we we have a number of different things on the table right now. Right? So we've got this whole investment thing with Robinhood and GameStop. We have this whole, you know, kinda conflict that's been going on about hate speech, about, you know, what's okay to be putting out there on the Internet, what's not okay to be putting out there on the Internet. We have other conflicts about, you know, whether or not conservatives are getting a fair break from the media and whether people are going easy on Joe Biden.

We have, you know, this whole kind of racial divide thing that's been happening over the past few years where, you know, the media has kind of been propagating this image of systemic racism. And, again, I'm not making comments on whether or not that that exists. I have my views on it. But what I wanna do is I wanna highlight kind of a pattern here. And the pattern is this.

It seems that the cultural elites in this country and and I'm talking to you whether you are a conservative, whether you are a liberal, whether you are black, whether you are white, whether you are anything in between, it seems like the cultural elites in this country have this idea that you're dumb, that you're not sophisticated enough, that you can't make decisions for yourself. Right? When it comes to investing. Right? Robinhood limits trades because they don't want people to take the risk of investing in, you know, companies like GameStop.

Right? Now here's the deal. When it comes to my own investing, I'm extraordinarily conservative. I invest in index funds. I do not invest in individual stocks.

I am not here to make recommendations on what you should invest in because I am a freaking idiot when it comes to money. I read a bunch of books on it. That's where I adopted my conservative investing philosophy. But if you look at my IRA, you're never gonna see me trading on margin. You're never gonna see me investing in something like GameStop or some of the other ones that are out there, like, I think it's AMC, the the the movie theaters.

Right? You're not gonna see me doing that. On the other hand, I believe that if you wanna go out there and you wanna trade on margin and you wanna invest in these companies, well, that's your money. That you worked hard for that money. You get to choose what you wanna do with that money.

Alright? I believe you should be educated, and I'm gonna do my damnedest to try to put you in touch with the best resources to educate yourself. But if you wanna go out there, you wanna invest in cryptocurrency, you wanna invest in anything else, that's you. That's your decision. And in our society, we need to trust that people are able to make decisions for themselves.

Not everybody's gonna make good decisions. Some people are gonna make horrible decisions. Alright? Some people are going to lose their shirts. Some people are gonna get lucky.

Right? And they're gonna ride a wave, and and and their their their their stocks are gonna increase, and and they're gonna make money, and that's awesome. And some people are gonna lose money, and that's horrible, but it's the lessons of life. Right? It's the lessons of life that you take with you, that you build.

Right? And it seems that the cultural leads do not want you to to afford you the opportunity to get those lessons, to to learn for yourself. Right? And they want you to believe that you're not capable of making those decisions so that you can go to them, so that you can bend the knee, so that you can basically acquiesce to the idea that that, you know, somebody else has to be making these decisions for you. Alright?

That we all have to live in a world where there's equal outcome, and if we don't live in a world where there's equal outcome, then it's an unfair world. Right? Same thing with speech. Right? You look at the social media platforms, they are limiting speech right now.

And let me tell you this. I've I've I've always been a very socially liberal person. Right? You know, I I I am a member of the Republican Party, but I've always been a very socially liberal person. I've always thought racism was one of the worst things in the world.

I've always thought that homophobia was one of the worst things in the world. But I realized something along the way. Right? I realized something along the way, and that is that when you are going and you are limiting somebody's ability to say something, that doesn't make that view go away. Right?

If you hate somebody's views on something and you tell them that they can't talk, well, guess what they're gonna do? They're gonna go and they're gonna talk with other people in other places. Right? And their views are probably gonna go unchallenged. Right?

You're not gonna be able to to to challenge them at all. You're not gonna be able to debate them, and you're not gonna be able to to change anybody's opinion about that because the the other place that they're going to to express their views, you're not gonna be there. Right? You're gonna be somewhere else expressing views amongst people who only agree with you. Right? And that's not gonna make your views any more logical. It's not gonna give you the opportunity to sharpen your arguments. What it's gonna do is it's it's gonna make you weaker because you're gonna go unchallenged as well.

Right? And we're in this time or place right now where it seems like the cultural elites don't think you're capable of that. Right? They just wanna erase everything. They wanna have this world where where everything is is, you know, just supposed to be agreeing one way.

Right? And here's the biggest danger of that whole thing. The biggest danger of that whole thing is that the people in charge right now are not always going to be the people in charge. Right? They're not.

Times change. Opinions change. Opinions shift. Governments shift. Right?

We live in a constitutional republic where the administration changes every four to eight years. And guess what's gonna happen? Right? Someday, it's gonna be somebody else at the helm. Someday, it's gonna be somebody else making the rules.

And when that happens, you might be on the losing end of that stick. Right? You might be the one whose views are getting ripped off of social media or ripped off of the media or or being pushed out somewhere else, and then the cycle happens all over again. So what am I saying here? I'm saying that in a world where society is increasingly becoming homogenous, alright, by force, by literal force in a world where society is increasingly pushing you to try to think a certain way, to try to make you dependent on the powers that be.

You need to do everything you can to learn as much as possible about the world as it is, not as you wish it was. Right? You need to do as much as you can to harden yourself and harden your ability to learn to debate, to be able to see alternative views, to be able to to make decisions. Because if you don't, you're gonna lose one of the most valuable life skills you can. Right?

You're gonna be in a world where you're you're finally gonna step into the real world, and you are gonna get vastly disappointed about what happens to you, and what you see and how people treat you and what you're able to do with your life, with your money, with everything. So get out there and learn. Don't trust everything you're seeing out there on social media. Go out there and find books. Read old books.

Read Montaigne. Right? Read Marcus Aurelius. Read Thucydides. Read Epictetus.

Right? Go out there and read everything you can. Right? Try to fucking read as many books as possible. Right?

And the reason I'm telling you that I'm not and I'm not telling you to read books that just agree one way or agree the other. Read multiple different views on things. When you're out there on the Internet, don't just watch Fox News or don't just watch CNN or don't just watch MSNBC. Try to look for alternative views out there. Go to one, then go to the other, see how they differ, and form your own freaking opinions.

Right? And when you're finding people, don't just freaking find people who agree with you on everything. Right? If you ever become a leader, if you're ever going into business, don't surround yourself with yes men. Find people with other views, other ways of doing things.

Learn from them. Alright? Put them to the test, see how they do. Alright? When we lose our initiative, when we lose our ability to make decisions for ourselves, we're losing everything.

That is the great tragedy of what's happening right now, and it's gonna affect you. I don't care if you're black, if you're white, if you're rich, you're poor, whatever. Your ability to make decisions is everything. And if you lose that ability, you've lost your life, and you lost your freedom. That's all I got for today, guys.

This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul podcast. Get out there. Learn as much as possible. Live your best life while you can, and I am out.