An open letter to James Madison

To the Honorable James Madison

Dear Sir,

I am writing to request your help and guidance. It has been some 230 years since you wrote the Constitution of the United States of America, a document I believe you had intended to establish a permanent, cohesive Democratic Republic --- the first of its kind on the face of the earth. In that document, you and your colleagues outlined a government that would be subservient to the people, deriving its powers from the consent of the governed.

Having been through decades of rule by a despotic king and parliament you did not elect, you laid out a framework for a government with very limited powers. Instead of creating a powerful, centralized government, your Constitution instead set forth a system that would ensure the people would retain their natural rights and individual states would retain their own sovereignty and control over their own destinies.

Your Constitution specified a government that would be in balance, with an elected bicameral legislature designed to ensure rural, agricultural states would not be ruled by densely populated urban states.

Your document laid forth three branches of government, with each branch having the power to curb the power of the others --- designed to prevent any branch of government from developing the power to take away the rights of the people or of the states.

And while the Constitution details very limited powers granted to the government, it also provides for the flexibility of being able to be amended by the people when they determine their freedom and security might be better served with new powers they choose to grant to the government, or powers they wish to take back from it.

In short, you wrote the Constitution to secure the blessings of liberty to yourself and your posterity, to create upon this earth a great experiment: a nation of individuals who would self-govern, where the government would never be allowed to steal the freedom and wealth of its people.

Your experiment has failed.

Well, sir, I regret to inform you that your experiment has failed. Your Constitution didn't work.

If the goal of the Constitution was to form a government that had limited power over its people and would never grow to deprive people of their liberty, their property and their lives, then it was a failure.

Don't get me wrong, it had a really good run.

The nation you helped to found quickly grew to become the most powerful nation on earth. Freedom was let loose upon this land, and the ingenuity of the people of the United States, unencumbered by a controlling, centralized government was able to build the most prosperous, wealthy and powerful country that has ever existed in the world.

With liberty assured to its citizens, the country you built has been to the moon. We have lifted billions of people around the world out of poverty. We have harnessed the power of the atom. We have vehicles with the power of 800 horses under the hood.

Mr. Madison, the nation you envisioned in your Constitution was real for a while. With the government out of their way, the people did what you thought they would: they flourished.

However, it didn't last.

Today in the nation you founded, we have lost those freedoms you detailed so thoroughly. The Constitution, designed to ensure a government of limited powers, is largely ignored and forgotten. The government no longer feels compelled to pay any heed to your document. The people of your nation are no longer secure in their own homes.

The government listens to all their conversations without warrants. The government steals their wealth at its own whim. The government's authority is not limited by the Constitution you wrote. Today in your nation, legislators who stand in defense of your Constitution are openly ridiculed in the media and on the floor of Congress for having old-fashioned thinking that is out of date. The government of today dictates to us what we are allowed to eat, to watch, to say, to purchase.

Our government determines for us what medicine we can take when we're sick, what our religious leaders are allowed to say from the pulpit, how fast we can drive our cars and what firearms we are allowed to have to defend ourselves. Our government openly spies upon us, forces our children to go to schools that it controls and takes our wealth at the point of a gun to fund endless wars across every continent on earth.

I'm writing to beg for your help.

In short, Mr. Madison, I'm writing to beg for your help. I need your help to understand. You see, you wrote the Constitution with what appears to be a fatal flaw: in order to fulfill its function of ensuring a government with limited powers that is incapable of taking away the rights of its citizens, it relies upon people.

The Constitution holds so much promise for a people, but it also relies on them to live it, to enforce it.

Today, if a Senator or House member stands to speak of limited government, they are shouted down as someone who must hate children, or must hate minorities or women. Today, our government is expected by the people to solve every perceived problem for every person and group on earth. Today, the government must control the weather, they must end disease and poverty, they are expected to ensure people don't get fat, don't get addicted to drugs, don't get concussions playing sports. The government must control hate and ensure nobody's feelings get hurt. Today, people willingly trade their freedom for the illusion of safety.

This great evil --- where did it come from? How did it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who is doing this? Who is killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might have known?

Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine?

Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night? Did you imagine the evil in your era, James?

I suppose it is unfair to judge you too harshly. After all, you did design and build the most powerful, free and wealthy nation that has ever existed. You designed a country that would see human beings for the wonderful creatures they are, that would respect their nature as a species, that would let them think and act freely.

Your document, in its simple brilliance, respects man as man is by his nature: a self-aware being of free will, endowed by its creator with inalienable rights that are neither granted to it nor dependent upon any other person or group. Rights that belong to each of us simply because we exist at all.

I wonder what you might say to us today. What might you say to Senator Mike Lee or Ted Cruz or Congressmen Thomas Massie, just before they stand up on the floor of Congress to defend some passage in your Constitution? What might you say to a school teacher when she gets to the chapter in the textbook that covers the Founding Fathers?

What might you say to me, sir? I, who have been a staunch defender of your document for most of my adult life. I, who have defended those in government who still try to live by your document?

Maybe you'd say:

Dear Mr. Beck, thank you for your note.

Sorry, the whole Free Nation thing didn't work out, good luck in the gulags.

Or maybe you'd say:

Glenn,

Don't give up on it, keep on defending your liberty, as we did in my day when a government stood against us to snuff it out.

Or maybe you'd tell us all the simple truth. The Constitution is just writing on a piece of paper. It only has the power you choose to grant it. Your freedom and liberty are not guaranteed by a piece of paper, nor could they ever be. They are secured and guaranteed by each of you, acting and working together to ensure your fellow citizens don't act to deprive you of them. Maybe you'd say:

It is not that the Constitution failed the people, Mr. Beck. It's that the people have failed The Constitution.

- Glenn Beck

What do clay pots have to do with to preserving American history?

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Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Why should we preserve our nation’s history? If you listen to my radio program and podcast, or read my columns and books, you know I’ve dedicated a large part of my life and finances to sourcing and preserving priceless artifacts that tell America’s story. I’ve tried to make these artifacts as available as possible through the American Journey Experience Museum, just across from the studios where I do my daily radio broadcast. Thousands of you have come through the museum and have been able to see and experience these artifacts that are a part of your legacy as an American.

The destruction of American texts has already begun.

But why should people like you and me be concerned about preserving these things from our nation's history? Isn’t that what the “big guys” like the National Archives are for?

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1946, a Bedouin shepherd in what is now the West Bank threw a rock into a cave nestled into the side of a cliff near the Dead Sea. Instead of hearing an echo, he heard the curious sound of a clay pot shattering. He discovered more than 15,000 Masoretic texts from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

These texts weren’t just a priceless historical discovery. They were virtually perfect copies of the same Jewish texts that continue to be translated today. Consider the significance of that discovery. Since the third century B.C. when these texts were first written, the Jewish people have endured a continued onslaught of diasporas, persecutions, pressures to conform to their occupying power, the destruction of their temple, and so much more. They had to fight for their identity as a people for centuries, and finally, a year after the end of the Holocaust and a year before the founding of the nation of Israel, these texts were discovered, confirming the preservation and endurance of their heritage since ancient times — all due to someone putting these clay pots in a desert cave more than 2,000 years ago.

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, what do these clay pots have to do with the calling to preserve American history? I didn’t understand that prompting myself until the horrible thought dawned on me that the people we are fighting against may very well take our sacred American scriptures, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. What if they are successful, and 1,000 years from now, we have no texts preserved to confirm our national identity? What kind of new history would be written over the truth?

The destruction of American texts has already begun. The National Archives has labeled some of our critical documents, like our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, as “triggering” or “containing harmful language.” In a public statement, the National Archives said that the labels help prepare readers to view potentially distressing content:

The Catalog and web pages contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.

According to this statement, our founding documents are either “outdated, biased, offensive,” “possibly violent,” or a combination of these scathing descriptions. I’m sorry, the Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.” Our Constitution is not “outdated and biased,” and our Bill of Rights certainly is not “offensive and possibly violent.” They are glorious documents. They should be celebrated, not qualified by such derogatory, absurd language. Shame on them.

These are only the beginning stages of rewriting our history. What if they start banning these “triggering” documents from public view because they might offend somebody? Haven’t we torn down “triggering” statues before? What if we are no longer able to see, read, and study the actual words of our nation's founding documents because they are “harmful” or “possibly violent”? A thousand years from now, will there be any remnant to piece together the true spirit behind the nation that our founders envisioned?

The Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.”

That is why in 2008, I was prompted to preserve what I could. Now, the American Journey Experience Museum includes more than 160,000 artifacts, from founding-era documents to the original Roe v. Wade court papers. We need to preserve the totality of our nation’s heritage, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to preserve our history in our own clay pots.

I ask you to join with me on this mission. Start buying books that are important to preserve. Buy some acid-free paper and start printing some of the founding documents, the reports that go against the mainstream narrative, the studies that prove what is true as we are continually being fed lies. Start preserving our daily history as well as our history because it is being rewritten and digitized.

Somebody must have a copy of what is happening now and what has happened in the past. I hope things don’t get really bad. But if they do, we need to preserve our heritage. Perhaps, someone 1,000 years from now will discover our clay pots and, Lord willing, be able to have a glimpse of America as it truly was.

Top 10 WORST items in the new $1.2 TRILLION spending bill

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Biden just signed the newest spending bill into law, and Glenn is furious.

Under Speaker Johnson's leadership, the whopping $1.2 TRILLION package will use your taxpayer dollars to fund the government through September. Of course, the bill is loaded with earmarks and pork that diverts money to fund all sorts of absurd side projects.

Here is the list of the ten WORST uses of taxpayer money in the recently passed spending bill:

Funding venues to host drag shows, including ones that target children

David McNew / Contributor | Getty Images

Money for transgender underwear for kids

Funding for proms for 12 to 18 year old kids

Bethany Clarke / Stringer | Getty Images

Border security funding... for Jordan and Egypt

Another $300 million for Ukraine

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

$3.5 million for Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade

Icon Sportswire / Contributor | Getty Images

$2.5 million for a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire

Acey Harper / Contributor | Getty Images

$2.7 million for a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people

$5 million for a new trail at Coastal Carolina University

$4 million the "Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project" (whatever that means)

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There is no doubt about it—we are entering dark times.

The November presidential election is only a few months away, and following the chaos of the 2020 election, the American people are bracing for what is likely to be another tumultuous election year. The left's anti-Trump rhetoric is reaching an all-time high with the most recent "Bloodbath" debacle proving how far the media will go to smear the former president. That's not to mention the Democrats' nearly four-year-long authoritarian attempt to jail President Trump or stop his re-election by any means necessary, even if it flies in the face of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Biden is doing worse than ever. He reportedly threw a tantrum recently after being informed that his polls have reached an all-time low. After Special Counsel Robert Hur's report expressed concerns over Biden's obviously failing mental agility, it's getting harder for the Democrats to defend him. Yet he is still the Democratic nominee for November, promising another 4 years of catastrophic policies, from the border to heavy-handed taxation, should he be reelected.

The rest of the world isn't doing much better. The war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight, drawing NATO and Russia closer and closer to conflict. The war in Gaza is showing no sign of slowing down, and as Glenn revealed recently, its continuation may be a sign that the end times are near.

One thing is clear: we are living in uncertain times. If you and your family haven't prepared for the worst, now is the time. You can start by downloading "Glenn's Ultimate Guide to Getting Prepared." Be sure to print off a copy or two. If the recent cell outage proved anything, it's that technology is unreliable in survival situations. You can check your list of supplies against our "Ultimate Prepper Checklist for Beginners," which you can find below:

Food

  • Canned food/non-perishable foods
  • Food preparation tools
  • Go to the next level: garden/livestock/food production

Water

  • Non-perishable water store
  • Water purification
  • Independent water source

Shelter

  • Fireplace with a wood supply
  • Tent
  • Generator with fuel supply
  • Go to the next level: fallout shelter

Money

  • Emergency cash savings
  • Precious metals

Medicine

  • Extra blankets
  • Basic first aid
  • Extra prescriptions
  • Extra glasses
  • Toiletries store
  • Trauma kit
  • Antibiotics
  • Basic surgery supplies
  • Potassium Iodate tablets

Transportation

  • Bicycle
  • Car
  • Extra fuel

Information

  • Birth certificates
  • Insurance cards
  • Marriage license
  • Immunization records
  • Mortgage paperwork
  • Car title and registration
  • House keys, car keys
  • Passports
  • Family emergency plan
  • Prepping/survival/repair manuals
  • Go to the next level: copy of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and other important books/sources

Skills

  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Sewing
  • First Aid
  • Basic maintenance skills
  • Go to the next level: farming/ranching
  • Self-defense training

Communication

  • Family contact information and addresses
  • HAM radio

Miscellaneous

  • Flashlights and batteries
  • Lamps and fuel
  • Hardware (tools, nails, lumber, etc)
  • Extra clothes
  • Extreme weather clothes and gear
  • Gas masks and filters
  • Spare parts for any machinery/equipment

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

PhotoQuest / Contributor, The Washington Post / Contributor, Win McNamee / Staff | Getty Images

Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

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Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

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Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

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The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.