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Glenn's Show Prep

Let's make sure Washington clearly understands: ‘Without us, they're doomed’

January 27, 2014
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The Glenn Beck Program

Tomorrow night, President Obama will deliver his sixth State of the Union address. The Constitution says the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." While the concept may be noble in theory, in reality, the annual address has devolved into nothing more than a campaign stump speech filled with empty promises.

On radio this morning, Glenn previewed President Obama’s remarks. You can guarantee the election-year themes of ‘income inequality’ and ‘change we can believe in’ will be on full display as President Obama promises to level the playing field by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. There is no question Americans are hungry for change, and President Obama will promise to right some of the wrongs and change the course of the country. But as Glenn explained, the change Americans seek can never come from Washington. We the people must be willing to fight for the change we wish to see.

Tomorrow night the President is going to give his State of the Union address before Congress and the American people. Well, actually, let me rephrase that first before we go on. Tomorrow night the President's going to give a campaign speech full of misleading data, some outright lies, some good sounding platitudes, and none of it will mean anything. And instead it will become a circus. And the only ones that will really watch it are those who are part of the circus – the media and those who are somehow or another involved in the parties. I don't think the American people are there anymore.

The President tomorrow will use the Second Amendment again to divide us, to talk about inequality and how the game is rigged and how it is so unfair. He's not going to mention those things like a good education, experience [that] will actually help you find things that are fair – that in the end… kind of equal out. Those with little education and not much experience will learn that those things… are the great equalizers.

But this society now is a society that doesn't like to work, doesn't want to do the hard things. We are being pitted against each other and envy is our real enemy now. But there is some luck involved. Corporate cronyism is a disease that is spreading, but by and large you still reap what you sow in this country. But that's not going to be good enough for the President or, quite honestly, those on the other side of the aisle, either, because they're all there to help you. It doesn't give them power, you see, if they actually tell the truth that you can make it, that this is a country still with the greatest opportunity on planet Earth, but it's fading fast.

So he wants to take from those who are educated, either in school or on their own, who have worked hard for years for the people who have taken risks that are now successful. They want to take it from them and give it to those who didn't do any of those things because, in their world, that is the definition of fairness. In my world that's robbery. But the good news is most Americans won't even watch or listen because it's not the America that we want.

Why have we allowed this to happen and go on year after year after year? Why are we doing that? Why do we just accept it? We've been asleep. Are we still asleep? We've had our heads down and we've become part of the herd instead of being heard. Look at the people around you. Next time you go to the airport, look around you. As people wind through the maze at airport security, heads down, following the winding path, oblivious to what's going on. If somebody in that line looked up and said, "Good morning," would you smile and respond, or would you think that they were some sort of crazy person? "What the hell's wrong with that person?"

Go to New York City and stand by the doors of Grand Central Station in the afternoon as commuters head home and head for their trains, their heads down in a trance, not paying any attention to those around them. What if you stopped somebody on the street or stopped somebody at Grand Central Station and said, "Excuse me, do you know of a good restaurant nearby?" How many would even slow down now…

That's the nation we used to be. And the good news is I think we still have that within our grasp. I think we're starting to realize who we were and what we've allowed ourselves to become, and we don't like what we see and so change is in the air. We want to change it. But know this: The change isn't going to come from the President tomorrow night. The change we actually seek is not coming from anybody who says "Vote for me and I'll change it." Oh, they'll change things, but the change you seek is not coming from Washington. The change will happen when we all start to look up. The change will happen when we take the time to connect with the stranger next to us, or when we take the time to connect to the strange news that we're hearing.

The big bank HSBC has restricted people from taking $10,000 or more out of their bank accounts without a note, I think from their mom, explaining what exactly they're doing with that money. "Why are you taking the money out?" Excuse me. It's my money. I'm taking my money out… The change will come when we stand at the teller of the bank and we look them in the eye and we say, "Excuse me. That's my money. If I want to take it all out, I'm going to take it all out.” "Well, sir, for your own safety, we are concerned when you leave the bank." And I want to take my own out and I walk out into the chat R into the street and I want to throw it out in the air, I have a right to do it. It's my money.

Things will change when we start looking up and connecting, connecting to what is really happening and then connecting with each other. There's a video up on TheBlaze that we watched this weekend… Just the greatest videos. Go watch it… Such a great video of hope. It's a little ripple, one kind moment, one kind gesture that will lead to another. Common sense, common values, common courtesy. And none of these are on display in Washington. So let's display them ourselves. We the people, three words that are self-evident. It's up to us. It always has been up to us. We the people.

Tomorrow night will be about manipulation and power and greed, envy, but we're so much better than that. The greatest presidents we've ever had have always been those presidents that made us want to reach inside of ourself and be better because all of us know we are better than this. We are the people.

I said to my wife, because I've been having some back problems, Pat has been having some back problems. And I said to my wife this weekend, "I am so sick of being sick. I'm so sick of feeling like crap." Don't you feel this way as an American? Aren't you sick of feeling this way? Aren't you sick of being less than we are? I know I'm not the only one. We're so much better than this! And nobody else is going to demand it of us, nor should they demand it. I don't want a president demanding, "Oh, I'll tell you this. You'll not be who you think you are. You're going to be better than…" What? We have to demand it of ourselves. We're awake. Finally we're awake and we're looking up.

The best days of this country, the best days of humankind are still ahead of us, and don't you ever believe otherwise. Don't you ever listen to anybody else tell you differently. Something those who want power, those who want you to consume something, buy something, they will always tell you: Well, you'll be so much better if you have X, Y or Z. Well, I'm a guy who has a lot of stuff for you to buy. I got a lot of books for you to buy. I've got a lot of tickets that I'd like you to buy. I've got a lot of news stories I'd like you to read. I'd like you to go to the advertisers on this radio station and buy some of their stuff if that's what you need. But I'm telling you right now, I don't need you to buy anything. You will not be better if you're listening to this program. You will not be stronger. You don't need me. You need to know the truth, and the truth is you were born with everything that you need. You're smart enough. I'm cobbling the stuff together that we're finding. You can do the same thing. Don't you ever believe anybody who says "Without me, you're nothing. Without this system, you won't be able to make it."

Washington wants you to believe that without them we are doomed. Well, let's flip the tables, shall we? Let's make sure that they clearly understand: "We the people. Without us, they're doomed."

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.