Blog
LatestArticlesVideos
Radio
LivePodcastSerialsStations
TV
Podcasts
The Glenn Beck ProgramThe Glenn Beck PodcastThe Beck Story
Fine Art
Real Estate
Shop
More
AboutCharityBooksSponsorsContact
SEARCH
Live Radio

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Enough is enough: Bring them home, period.

June 17, 2014
Radio Clips

The Glenn Beck Program

On radio this morning, Glenn looked at the troubling news of the day in a slightly different light. Glenn remains steadfast in his belief that the United States government must bring our servicemen and women home and not put troops on the ground in Iraq. This morning, he went so far as to “lead with his mistakes” and admit that liberals had the right idea back in the early 2000s when they opposed intervention in the Middle East. And yet despite all the forces at play that are trying to tear us apart, Glenn remained surprisingly optimistic about America’s future.

Below is an edited transcript of the monologue:

I want to the start in a different place. The media keeps saying we are a nation that is being torn apart at the seams. In some ways, I agree with them, only because we are not looking for the things that bring us together. The left and right, we can't agree on anything, right? The only place we can find common ground is in the hatred of one another. That's the narrative that everybody is giving you. Unfortunately, there is some truth to that, unless we decide to look for more.

We have been greatly divided. When the President burst out on the scene, he talked about how George Bush tore us apart with two wars and we had an economic disaster. A lot of people said, ‘He's right. We were a mess.’ We really, truly were a mess in 2008.

I don't think it's gotten any better for the last five years. We have done nothing but watch our country and our families, our friends be ripped apart. We are deeper in debt. We are immersed in foreign wars. Our economy is much more fragile than it was in 2008. Racial tensions are higher than I have ever seen them. I'm 50 years old. I don't remember an America that felt like this race-wise. We are far from reaching across the aisle. I shouldn't say that. The Republicans and Democrats are perfectly fine reaching across the aisle. They are not only reaching across the aisle, they are reaching across the aisle and fondling each other. It's just they are on the same exact page, and they will demonize. The Republicans are doing it, and the Democrats will do it. They will demonize anyone that steps out of line with the parties.

As bad as it has been, amazingly enough, lately, we seem to be finding areas where we all agree. There are things that are happening in America. For instance, the VA scandal. The VA scandal, Americans agree, is horrific. We need to plant our flag in some places where we know we are on the right side. Let's start planting our flags where we can have some victory. That's one of them: The VA scandal. Let's start reaching across to people in our neighborhood, our friends who vote differently than us, on things like the VA scandal. There's tons of blame. The President campaigned in 2008 on the VA saying that it was completely out of control. Now it's much worse now, but that's the place we could start. George Bush screwed it up. I know. It was horrible. Good. Your guy didn't do anything, so let's fix it now.

We will be coming together to stop Common Core. I can't tell you how remarkable this Common Core thing is. When Bill Gates comes up and gives a speech: ‘How about we call it a two-year hiatus? Just give it two years, see if it works. If it doesn't, we'll just give up. Let's do that.’ Really? They're letting Justina [Pelletier] go probably in the next couple of weeks too. We're on to you, Bill.

Here's the great thing: No matter how much money you are spending to sell us this load of bull crap, Americans aren't buying it. It is not just the right. It's the left too. It's the teachers. It's the Chicago teachers union. Could we get any more left than that? The Tea Party standing side-by-side with the Chicago teachers unions? That's fantastic.

America is healing herself. I really want to talk to you about this compass I have been working on. I have said for a while that there's going to come a time when everything you know is upside down, when what you thought was solid would be liquid and liquid will be solid. Up is down, down is up. What was right will be wrong. Good will become evil. And there will be nothing that you recognize or can count on. I have said that for probably eight years. The time is here.

We are headed in exactly the wrong direction. We are at the polar opposite now of where we should be going. That's not a conservative saying that. I believe that's anyone with any common sense. ‘We should be doing more testing on our kids?’ Come on. You know that's not right. ‘We should have more Islamic oversight in our Department of Homeland Security.’ You know that's not right. ‘We should spend more money to get out of debt.’ You know that's not right. ‘We should rush doctors and nurses and build emergency centers for the people who are coming across our borders, and they are coming here illegally and we are putting them on military bases.’ Meanwhile, we can't get the military to be able to get in to see a doctor for things like cancer. You know that's not right.

Maybe we could come together now on this nightmare in Iraq. From the beginning, most people on the left were against going into Iraq. I wasn't. At the time I believed that the United States was under threat from Saddam Hussein. I really truly believed that Saddam Hussein was funding terrorists. We knew that. He was funding the terrorists in Hamas. We knew that he was giving money. We could track that. We knew he hated us. We knew that without a shadow of a doubt. It wasn't much or a stretch to believe that he would fund a terror strike against us, especially since he would say that. So I took him at his word.

There were also atrocities that were happening in Iraq torture chambers, mass graves. At the time, the unanimous belief – even with Hillary Clinton and everybody else – was that he had weapon of mass destruction. There was also the element – and this is really what spoke to me – of bringing freedom to the people of Iraq for the first time in their long history. I don't want to control Iraq, but I have a soft spot for people who are being tortured and just want freedom because I really, truly believe Democrats and Republicans are the same. Israelis and Palestinians are the same. Once you get the politicians to leave the room, once you can deprogram people from what the politicians and leaders have said, everyone is pretty much the same. It's like, ‘I just want to be left alone.’ ‘I just want to raise my family, have fun.’ ‘I want a decent life.’ Then politicians get involved and program us to hate each other. You have to be carefully taught who to hate.

Now, in spite of the things I felt at the time when we went into war, liberals said: We shouldn't get involved. We shouldn't nation-build. And there was no indication the people of Iraq had the will to be free. I thought that was insulting at the time. Everybody wants to be free. They said we couldn't force freedom on people. Let me lead with my mistakes. You are right. Liberals, you were right. We shouldn't have.

Now, if you believed those things, let me say: You were right. If you were just using it for political purposes, well, we don't have anything in common, But if you really believe those things, I would like to have a conversation with you now to find out exactly how you came to terms with that – especially being a progressive. If you know the history of the progressive movement, it was Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson that started imposing democracy in South America. The reason why South America is just loaded with communists is because we put a lot of them in. That's the progressive ideal.

But I agree with you: You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else. It doesn't work. They don't understand it or even really want it. They may be too immersed in their own belief of Sharia Law to embrace liberty or at least at this time. If people vote for Sharia Law, they vote for Sharia Law. We tried. What can we do? We have lost thousands of American lives. We have lost thousands of lives on the Iraqi side and tens of thousands have been wounded. We have spent $2 trillion – say that again – $2 trillion, and upwards of 200,000 Iraqi citizens, aid workers, insurgents have been killed. That's the conservative number. Liberals will tell you it's almost 1 million people. I don't know what the number is, but after all of that, hundreds of thousands of lives, $2 trillion, the best minds in the world trying to do it, it's about to fall apart.

Terrorists of the most radical kind – maybe the most radical we have witnessed since Nazis – are now poised to overrun the capitol city. All of our effort, all our sacrifices, all of it is gone. $1 billion embassy, which I contend, I have nothing to back it up except my gut, that's not an embassy. It is a listening station. There's something wrong with that embassy. You don't build something that big in Baghdad. How many of us are going, ‘I'm going to vacation in Baghdad. Hope they have a nice embassy’? What do we have it there for? Why is it that big? Something is wrong with that.

But, anyway, all of that is gone. And yet, this is something I think that we can come together with, on the right and the left. And it's this – I have more of a chance of hacking off my loyal listeners and audience by saying this, but so be it: Not one more life. Not one more life. Not one more dollar, not one more airplane, not one more bullet, not one more Marine, not one more arm or leg or eye. Not one more.

The people of Iraq have got to work this out themselves. Our days of being the world's policemen, our days of interventionists is over. If we are directly attacked, so be it. But this must end now.

Can't we come together on that? Are we not all a people that can come together on that? Wedon't want our sacrifice to be a waste. Let me ask you this question: What good will one more life do? To waste one more life, what good will it do, to waste another dollar, let alone another trillion? And conservatives, is there one that believes this President will prosecute a new war in Iraq properly? When the biggest hawk of them all, the Darth Vader of the entire galactic empire, Dick Cheney and George Bush didn't prosecute it right? No. In the end, the result will be the same. Another group of radicals will pop up again. It is like a never-ending game of whack amole over there. The only way to prevent Baghdad from being overrun eventually is stay there and continue to fight this militarily in perpetuity. Are you willing to do that?

Don't even start with me on your oil an gas. Guess we should have thought about that earlier. Maybe if we use our own oil and gas, we wouldn't have to worry about this. Liberals, you were against it in the first place. How could you be in favor of more intervention now? How could you possibly be for that after everything you have said about how it's going to fall apart in the end was right? Everything I said that we could hold it together was wrong.

We need to pull out and end the long nightmarish involvement in this mess. We need to do the same in Afghanistan, once and for all. I remember back in the 1970s, we were going to the moon and liberals at that time would say, ‘We have bigger problems here on earth that need to be taken care of.’ How much more is that argument correctly applied to today's situation?

Finally, there are some things we can agree on. Finally, there are some things we can come together on and clean up our own house. But if we do to the liberals what they did to us and George W. Bush and make it just about politics, we will be divided more. This cannot become about the President. It cannot become act the Democrats. This has to become about the principles because in the principles we all agree. Enough is enough. Bring them home, period.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.