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Glenn's Show Prep

Can love conquer all?

December 11, 2014
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The Glenn Beck Program

Last night on the Glenn Beck program, Stu Burguiere filled in for Glenn. Andrew W.K., our favorite rocker with a "philosophy of partying" joined Stu to weigh in on atheists and loving your neighbor. During their conversation, Stu brought up a video of a "prayer" that occured at a city council meeting that left many outraged. Stu took the opportunity to ask Andrew W.K. his thoughts on the video asking, if Andrew was in in the city council meeting would he have acted the same as the "prayer leader"?

In true Andrew W.K. fashion, he took the opportunity to respond to the question in a loving, enlightened and meaningful way:

Well, for me personally, I wouldn’t probably go to a meeting like that. I think there’s other ways to accomplish probably very similar ends that don’t involve as much fighting, I guess, or just battling. I think that certain people are drawn to that kind of environment, that kind of atmosphere where they like debate. You know, debate is a great thing. They teach it. People can become world-class debaters, and again, it stirs up emotions that are very satisfying.

It’s fun to feel like you beat someone in a debate. It’s fun to, you know, to lose sometimes and to sort of have that humiliation. It’s all, I guess, you know, sort of a game in itself there, but these are real things on the line, and I would imagine that, again, if you hold onto these beliefs very passionately and personally, no one can really strip you of what you think. You know what I mean? At least so far, technology has not allowed us to infiltrate someone’s brain completely, so hold onto that, you know, in the midst of all these battles.

As the conversation continued, it turned towards messages of love and hope; beliefs that have played a strong part in Glenn's life and his shows. After all, Glenn does have a song entitled "Love" as his radio theme song. In response to some critics, saying that Andrew W.K. now preaches "hippie-dippey nonsense," he took the opportunity to discuss the complexities, yet beauty of love. And in true Stu fashion, it somehow turned onto a conversation about cute pugs, but it is still worth a watch.

Stu: Joining me now to talk more about this is Andrew W.K. Andrew, first off, what is your opinion on drunken horse chasing? Is that part of the party hard philosophy?

Andrew: Well, drunken riding is never a good idea, even if you’re the horse. You know, it’s dangerous for everybody, so try to avoid drunken really anything with a vehicle, and a horse does count.

Stu: Okay, that’s good. We have that cleared up. And again, this is how we come together, and we can all live a happy life. I’m interested in your take on this, because, you know, there are a lot of different viewpoints out there, and I really do think that is what makes this country great. We’re allowed to express them without fear of, you know, any reprisal from the government, but it seems like people get so antagonistic against each other and just try to basically ruin everybody else’s fun. And you see the story, I think there’s a good part of that in the story from Florida where the atheist tried to basically needle all the people who have faith in the committee. How did you see that?

Andrew: Well, I think that largely what people want in these situations is attention. They want us to be doing what we are doing right now, which is talking about it, but hopefully even more than that that we’re thinking about it. And I think any situation that brings us into personal thought and reflection, ultimately that’s good, so if we give them credit for inspiring thought to see inside of ourselves what we think about these things, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Stu: See, you have too positive a viewpoint. I strive to get to the point where I could handle things the way you do, because, you know, I can’t help to get annoyed sometimes when people needle me or needle something that I care about, and I think that’s the average person. You know, at the end of the day, does it make a difference in your life what someone else thinks about your viewpoint? No, but it’s still something you feel like you need to defend your turf. Maybe you feel like they need to, you know, it’s like sports, you feel like your team is being violated, and you want to defend it. How do you get to that point where you can kind of just sit back and say…? Yeah, go ahead.

Andrew: I think sports are actually a very good comparison, because if we think of sports as a game, we engage in that because it’s fun. We are not defending truly our life in a game like a sport like football, for example. We’re allowed to explore those feelings in a playful way for the sake of competition, the excitement of standing with the team, but at the end of the day, we also do realize that it is kind of just for fun, even very passionate fun, very emotional fun, but for fun.

So when someone needles at me, if I’m not so sure of my point of view, it might threaten me a little bit more, but again, I just have to think about it, and ultimately, like you said, I don’t care that much about what someone else thinks, especially if that person was just trying to get under my skin, you know?

Stu: So put yourself in a position, you’re someone who, you know, you believe strongly in whatever, you know, atheism or whatever, and you’re sitting at a council meeting like that, and you don’t like the prayer thing. You think it’s silly. It’s not your belief structure, but you do recognize that there are good people who are with you who do. Do you take that opportunity to go in there and try to essentially insult them to win them over? Does that work? Or what do you do with that time?

Andrew: Well, for me personally, I wouldn’t probably go to a meeting like that. I think there’s other ways to accomplish probably very similar ends that don’t involve as much fighting, I guess, or just battling. I think that certain people are drawn to that kind of environment, that kind of atmosphere where they like debate. You know, debate is a great thing. They teach it. People can become world-class debaters, and again, it stirs up emotions that are very satisfying.

It’s fun to feel like you beat someone in a debate. It’s fun to, you know, to lose sometimes and to sort of have that humiliation. It’s all, I guess, you know, sort of a game in itself there, but these are real things on the line, and I would imagine that, again, if you hold onto these beliefs very passionately and personally, no one can really strip you of what you think. You know what I mean? At least so far, technology has not allowed us to infiltrate someone’s brain completely, so hold onto that, you know, in the midst of all these battles.

Stu: That would be pretty fun though, because you could get people to do like anything you want. It would be awesome.

Andrew: I’m sure they’re working on it. Yeah, they’re getting along with that technology, but so far, so good, we can still think what we want to think ourselves.

Stu: It’s right around the corner. You had someone kind of take you to task or attempt to take you to task in one of your recent columns where they said basically like Andrew, I love you, I love your music, you’re great, but you’re constantly preaching this hippie-dippy nonsense, and everyone needs to find love and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was interesting to read that, because I could produce 12 letters a day that we get from our listeners that say the same thing—Glenn’s constantly talking about, you know, trying to work together and understand other people, and it’s a different vibe for maybe talk radio or politics.

Andrew: Yes.

Stu: And so it’s tough. I struggle with it, to be honest. You know, I struggle with it. You sit there, and a lot of times I think, you know, love…and you made this point in the column, love can conquer all. Why can’t it? You know, stop doubting it. But there’s a human feeling that it just feels like it’s sort of this, I don’t know, Enya sort of thing that’s just sort of like flowing up there. It’s all feel good and everything, but it doesn’t actually get results. If you don’t go out there and fight for your positions or fight for what you believe in, then you wind up just getting rolled over.

Andrew: The elusive qualities of that approach, loving everybody, it seems…it’s like this, it’s too good to be true combined with too easy combined with unrealistic combined with all these efforts that we make. We’re so used to striving, like it’s an outward push, this, you know, forcing ourselves, forcing our will.

We can judge success more clearly in this material world where we see results that we made happen, and this love approach which is, you know, even the word love, it rubs people the wrong way, which is so strange, but this approach is all the opposite. It’s all about not doing as much, about going inward instead of outward, about getting results in a less tangible way, and for that reason, it is challenging. It isn’t easy, but at the same time it’s like the easiest thing of all.

You know, to love a baby, for example, that’s not…takes a lot of hard work that you have to put all that effort into loving that baby. You just look at its round face and its plushy eyes and its dewy complexion, and you just feel good. So why can’t we, you know, have that same kind of ease in all these other situations? I mean, not everything is as cute as a baby. That’s probably part of the reason.

Stu: That would be a solution. You know, Glenn once said a long time ago, because I have two pugs, and I was arguing that my dog was cute, and he said it was actually incredibly ugly. You look at a pug, you know, it’s got a smashed face. It’s got the giant bulging eyeballs, but it’s still cute, and his point was anything that’s small is cute, and maybe that’s the problem, we’re just too large. If we just were all cute little babies, we’d all be able to love each other a lot more easily. I don’t know if that’s going to be solved anytime soon, but…

Andrew: Well, yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, like is a mountain, a mountain, you wouldn’t call a cute mountain or a cute galaxy.

Stu: It’s grand. It’s beautiful. It’s just you have this little adorable thing that’s just there, and when you see something small and adorable, you can’t help but love it. It’s when they get big, and then they’re ugly dogs.

Andrew: You know, our ability to be bigger than other things is where we can, you know, exhibit mercy and acts of, you know, benevolent kindness because we do have a larger presence to that thing. I mean, we’re bigger than an ant, and we can choose not to step on an ant, for example. And the mountain is bigger than us, you know, or God could be bigger than us and thinks of us like the way we think of a baby. So can we look at least at each other as brothers? I mean, my brother is pretty cute, and he is younger than me, but he’s actually an inch taller than me, and I still feel that kind of affection for him.

Stu: Wow, you actually brought that back to something rational. That was pretty impressive. I have to give you some credit on that.

Andrew: I did lose it for a second there.

Stu: Let me give you this, is it part of the equation here to try to love someone and solve problems that way? Is part of it just being comfortable in your own skin, being comfortable that you can’t convince everyone to agree with you, being comfortable that other people are going to think you’re an idiot sometimes? If you can get to that place, all of this becomes a lot easier.

Andrew: I completely agree. I think maybe that’s the best way to put it actually is that it’s a mindset. You actually can’t ask that much of it to work all the time. It’s sort of like an ideal, and why not have the highest ideal we could possibly conceive of at the forefront of all our behavior in our mind, even if we don’t always get there, even if we never get there? You don’t settle for less. We push for more, you know?

Stu: Yeah, that’s a great point. Andrew W.K., thanks so much for coming on, and we’ll talk. Maybe next time you come on, we can just expand the conversation on the drunken horse riding. I think that was really important.

Andrew: Okay, I like that. That sounds good.

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.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

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: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

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.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

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.