You would think that any “Glenn Beck” headlines from the weekend would be about Restoring Courage, South Africa, Venezuela, or the one year anniversary of Restoring Honor. Instead, the media decided to take an out of context quote Glenn made on Friday’s radio show and make him look like a crazy person – and they made sure to add a healthy dose of anti-Mormon bigotry into the news cycle too! Nice one media!
The Washington Post wrote:
Beck, one of Mormonism’s most famous converts, is actually touting one of the unique aspects of the Latter-day Saint faith: food storage.Section 78 of the Doctrine and Covenants revelation was given, Mormons believe, to Joseph Smith by God in 1832 and includes the command to “organize and establish a storehouse,” which Mormon leaders have interpreted as a requirement to, when possible, “store and save a one-year supply of food.” The church Web site even includes a Food Storage Calculator “to help you determine your longer-term food storage needs.” The food storage is one pillar of self-reliance, emphasized within Mormonism so that “the church may stand independent above all other creatures beneath the celestial world.” Beyond personal storage, the church also provides temporary welfare services to its members “to help people to help themselves.”
Clearly, the article is trying to smear Glenn’s religious beliefs and make it sound like his calls for preparedness are some attempt to convert people to his beliefs. Or something.
"Now, they take this and they try to smear me, try to make me into a nut job. For what reason exactly? What reason? That you should be a help to others?"
"What I'm saying to you is this is a good thing because it's not going to kill a lot of people, and maybe a few people will remember, hey, maybe I should be a help to others. Maybe there's a way that I can be prepared for something that we didn't foresee."
"Hurricanes Rita, Katrina and Ike certainly woke me up and helped me understand how prepared you must be. And it helped show exactly what the conditions will be on the ground and in your community if and when there's some sort of an emergency that hits. It's not pleasant. Because everything's gone and everything's closed and it's too late when it finally hits," Pat said.
"It was nice to go through the preparation and lead up to this hurricane and know that I had plenty of water and know that I had plenty of baby supplies and know that we had all the stuff we needed to get through something like this. It made it a lot less of a freak‑out situation. I don't understand why that's such controversial advice," Stu said.
“How is this a bad thing? How is it, really, honestly, how is this a bad thing?” Glenn asked his listeners.
“Yeah, I'm not a Mormon and I still think preparation makes sense,” Stu said. “These are not Mormon concepts. These are common sense concepts.”
