Glenn speaks to the NRA: "Yes I Will"

April 16, 2012

Writer

A chalkboard, history, unpasturized butter, and a shoe - there is only one man who could take all of these things, put them together in a speech, and get a standing ovation. That man is Glenn Beck.

Saturday night Glenn gave the keynote at the National Rifle Associations annual convention. He was introduced to the stage by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, who told the crowd that "he shoots straight and gun owners couldn't have a better fan."

Glenn kicked off the speech by clearing the air about who he is endorsing for President of the United States - his shoe.

"Anyone but Barack Obama, including my shoe," Glenn said. "He'd do better than Barack Obama, I can make the case."

Next, Glenn discussed how the tragic death of Trayvon Martin is being used to target our second Amendment rights. "This government will never let a crisis go to waste," Glenn said, describing how this particular crisis is being used to vilify gun owners.

Glenn also touched on Al Sharpton for his public role the last few weeks in the Trayvon Martin case. George Zimmerman, the shooter, was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder in the Florida teen’s death.

“I saw him this week actually patting himself on the back,” Beck said of Sharpton. ” ‘I was the first to say he’s guilty and should go to jail.‘ When did that become something we’re proud of? When did that become something we wear as a badge of honor, to say ‘I was the first to try a man in the media? I was the first to say oh, that pesky Constitution. The right to a jury trial. I was the first to say guilty before innocent.‘ That’s crazy. The world is absolutely upside-down.”

Glenn compared what Sharpton and others on the left are doing now to what they did when the administration tried to hold the trial of some of the worst terrorist in New York City. "It was vital to show the world how great the our justice system is. …where are they now defending that great American justice system? Nowhere - let the world see the American justice system. It works," Glenn told the crowd.

This transitioned into a discussion of the lack of truth in the mainstream media today. "The media is not telling you the truth. That's why we started GBTV," Glenn said pointing out the coverage the case in Florida is getting compared to noncontroversial stories where guns were used for self-defense. Glenn cited six stories where people were able to defend and save their own lives because of their right to bear arms:

A woman in Oklahoma who was being attacked by a man with a knife.

A college student in Philadelphia who robbers began firing shots at because he didn't have any money.

A woman in Duluth, GA who was met by a man with a knife when she stepped out of her shower.

A woman in Albany, GA who was met by a man with a butcher knife and another with a gun when she walked into her office.

A double amputee who had his home invaded by a teen who fired two shots at him.

And finally, a 110lb Florida beauty queen, who was dragged upstairs to her bedroom by an intruder, where he was met by her fiancé, giving her just enough time to grab her pink 38.

The National Academy of Science recently published a review to find out which laws are really helping out when it comes to violent crime, suicide, and accidents. "Take a guess?," Glenn asked the crowd. "Out of 253 journalists, 99 books, 43 government publications and 80 gun control schemes, the number of laws that actually help - zero. Nobody reports anywhere when someone saves a life or stops a crime, because they're a responsible citizen with a gun. But, the chance of you getting hurt or killed by a gun in the hands of a responsible citizen - one in a million."

Glenn told the crowd that the name they all need to know and learn about when it comes to regulations is Cass Sunstein, who Glenn describes as "the most dangerous man in America."

"They're not going to take your gun away from you. They're just going to make it impossible for you to buy another one, impossible for you to own a bullet, buy a bullet, shoot it anywhere," Glenn said, while giving the example of what it is like for someone to try and buy a gun in New York City.

Glenn continued to give other examples of out of control regulation. Everything from digging from arrow heads and selling sea otters to a woman who was raided by NOAA with assault rifles. NOAA …the weather people.

Glenn also told the audience about how our government spent a year undercover with the Amish. "What's their crime? Unhomogenized, unpasteurized milk," Glenn said, joking about how they were ever shipping it across state lines.

Glenn happened to have spoken in Lancaster, PA Friday night, and brought some unpasteurized butter back with him - yes, across state lines.

So, how did we get here? "We don't know our own history," Glenn said, while referencing the famous picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware.

The original was painted in Germany where it was destroyed in an airstrike in 1944. Glenn gave the history of the recreated piece of art that resides in America, featuring not just George Washington, but Madison holding the flag, a woman, a Scott, and an African American. It was recreated by a man from Berlin in 1850, just after the 'Spring of Nations', which took place on February 23, 1848. What caused this eerily familiar sounding revolution to breakout across Europe on the 23rd? Just two days prior, on February 21st, 1848, Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto.

Glenn explained the history lesson to the crowd using his trademark tool - the chalkboard.

"How does it relate to this picture? And what does history?" Glenn asked the crowd. "What is it screaming to America? It was communism that led to the Spring of Nations that broke out all over Europe, and one man lived in America, who was a German, went back and said 'No! that's the wrong direction'."

Glenn asked the crowd why would the painter include a woman, a farmer, an African American, all together in this one painting?

"Because, the average person, when linked together, can do anything," Glenn said while being met with applause.

"America is never about the finished product," he told the crowd, "it's about the journey, the process; it's about being what we are - each of us with different skills and different backgrounds, coming together and doing the right thing."

"We are headed for another spring of nations - history is crying out everywhere - it is telling us - it aint that hard guys - the answer is not that hard."

Glenn told the crowd about what George Washington did before fighting the Revolutionary War - he called for a National Day of Prayer and Fasting on May 17th. Glenn suggested that we do the same this May 17th.

"We beg God to protect this nation and His cause. Go home and tell your preachers and your rabbis," Glenn told the cheering crowd while continuing to tell the story of the amazing Crossing of the Delaware.

"The solutions that we need are right in front of us," Glenn transitioned. "We need to find a leader. We have Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney's our guy. I haven't been a Mitt Romney fan, but let me tell you something, I've done a lot of research. I've looked into his past. I've looked into all of his policies. I've looked into everything I can possibly find on Mitt Romney to see if there is something I can really get my arms around, and say 'Yes, the American people need to know this.' Here it is: Mitt Romney is my guy, because Mitt Romney is not a communist."

Glenn emphasized to the crowd how important it is going to be for every one of them to vote in the next election, while citing that 10 to 30 percent of every conservative organization is not registered to vote. "Clean up your own house first," Glenn said.

"We need God, we need education, the third thing we need is empowerment. We need entrepreneurship," Glenn explained telling the crowd that we must not only create, but we must also elevate others.

Glenn wrapped things up by talking about what conservatives have to do if they really want small government - be charitable. "Who is going to take care of the poor? Who's going to take care of those that are unemployed? Who will take care of the elderly? If you really want small government, let's be a group of people that when the press asks, 'Who is going to take care of the poor?' We don't say we will, we say we are. Our churches our neighborhoods are organized and taking care of the poor and those who cannot work."

“Barack Obama‘s winning slogan was 'Yes we can.' That’s the dumbest damn slogan I’ve ever heard,” Glenn said. “Don’t tell me what you can do. Will you do it? Will you do it? ‘Yes we can.’ What a bunch of crap that is.”

Glenn wrote the words “Yes I will” on the chalkboard.

“Yes I will,” he said. “Are you going to vote? ‘Yeah I could do that.’ Are you going to vote? ‘Yes I will.’”

“Will you be a man or a woman of honor?” he asked. “‘Yes I will.’ Will you seek equal justice for all? ‘Yes I will.’"

"Seek the truth. Have the courage to stand." Glenn concluded. "These are not the times that try mens souls, but they will be. The great news is, we'll be ready."

Many were live tweeting during the speech, here is what a few people had to say:

‏@RJBoisvert: @GBTV @glennbeck Inspiring speech at NRA by Glenn Beck! YES I WILL!

@HeadToToeHarlen: Will you stand or not? Great speaker! Thank you Glenn Beck for coming to our NRA convention! ALL IN!

@cbrown285: Glenn Beck "Mitt Romney is my guy because he is not a communist." that is a low bar of expectations but it is better than Obama #NRA

@nlasmus: The @glennbeck speech at the #NRA Convention is so inspiring! We the ppl hold the key to restoring our nation! National Day of Prayer May 17!

@EJRWatkins: @glennbeck LOVED video of NRA speech. You're 100% right. We ARE a covenant land and people!

Of course the usual haters were one the prowl, condemning Glenn for sharing stories of men and women protecting themselves from attackers using their 2nd Amendment rights (kind of proves his point about the left and the media, doesn't it?).

@CSGV: .@glennbeck stories of "justified" homicides, celebrating the deaths, #NRA Celebrating 18 yr old mom and baby being alive - evil

@CSGV: @glennbeck has now been a headline speaker at #NRA Convention for six years in a row. #Extremism #ows #labor #WarOnWomen #immigration #p2

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VIDEO: Both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama are radicals, but there's one HUGE difference

Biden backs yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences

The number of people serving life sentences now exceeds the entire prison population in 1970, according to newly-released data from the Sentencing Project. The continued growth of life sentences is largely the result of "tough on crime" policies pushed by legislators in the 1990s, including presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Biden has since apologized for backing those types of policies, but it seems he has yet to learn his lesson. Indeed, Biden is backing yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences—mandatory drug treatment for all drug offenders.

Proponents of this policy argue that forced drug treatment will reduce drug usage and recidivism and save lives. But the evidence simply isn't on their side. Mandatory treatment isn't just patently unethical, it's also ineffective—and dangerous.

Many well-meaning people view mandatory treatment as a positive alternative to incarceration. But there's a reason that mandatory treatment is also known as "compulsory confinement." As author Maya Schenwar asks in The Guardian, "If shepherding live human bodies off to prison to isolate and manipulate them without their permission isn't ethical, why is shipping those bodies off to compulsory rehab an acceptable alternative?" Compulsory treatment isn't an alternative to incarceration. It is incarceration.

Compulsory treatment is also arguably a breach of international human rights agreements and ethical standards. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have made it clear that the standards of ethical treatment also apply to the treatment of drug dependence—standards that include the right to autonomy and self-determination. Indeed, according to UNODC, "people who use or are dependent on drugs do not automatically lack the capacity to consent to treatment...consent of the patient should be obtained before any treatment intervention." Forced treatment violates a person's right to be free from non-consensual medical treatment.

It's a useless endeavor, anyway, because studies have shown that it doesn't improve outcomes in reducing drug use and criminal recidivism. A review of nine studies, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, failed to find sufficient evidence that compulsory drug treatment approaches are effective. The results didn't suggest improved outcomes in reducing drug use among drug-dependent individuals enrolled in compulsory treatment. However, some studies did suggest potential harm.

According to one study, 33% of compulsorily-treated participants were reincarcerated, compared to a mere 5% of the non-treatment sample population. Moreover, rates of post-release illicit drug use were higher among those who received compulsory treatment. Even worse, a 2016 report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that people who received involuntary treatment were more than twice as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose than those with a history of only voluntary treatment.

These findings echo studies published in medical journals like Addiction and BMJ. A study in Addiction found that involuntary drug treatment was a risk factor for a non-fatal drug overdose. Similarly, a study in BMJ found that patients who successfully completed inpatient detoxification were more likely than other patients to die within a year. The high rate of overdose deaths by people previously involuntarily treated is likely because most people who are taken involuntarily aren't ready to stop using drugs, authors of the Addiction study reported. That makes sense. People who aren't ready to get clean will likely use again when they are released. For them, the only post-treatment difference will be lower tolerance, thanks to forced detoxification and abstinence. Indeed, a loss of tolerance, combined with the lack of a desire to stop using drugs, likely puts compulsorily-treated patients at a higher risk of overdose.

The UNODC agrees. In their words, compulsory treatment is "expensive, not cost-effective, and neither benefits the individual nor the community." So, then, why would we even try?

Biden is right to look for ways to combat addiction and drug crime outside of the criminal justice system. But forced drug treatment for all drug offenders is a flawed, unethical policy, with deadly consequences. If the goal is to help people and reduce harm, then there are plenty of ways to get there. Mandatory treatment isn't one of them.

Lindsay Marie is a policy analyst for the Lone Star Policy Institute, an independent think tank that promotes freedom and prosperity for all Texans. You can follow her on Twitter @LindsayMarieLP.

BOMBSHELL: 'It wasn't just Hunter,' Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden was target of Ukraine corruption investigation — and he has the evidence to prove it

President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani joined Glenn Beck on Tuesday's radio program discuss the Senate's ongoing investigation into former vice president Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and reveal new bombshell documents he's currently releasing.

Giuliani told Glenn he has evidence of "very, very serious crime at the highest levels of government," that the "corrupt media" is doing everything in their power to discredit.

He also dropped some major, previously unreported news: not only was Hunter Biden under investigation in 2016, when then-Vice President Biden "forced" the firing of Ukraine's prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, but so was the vice president himself.

"Shokin can prove he was investigating Biden and his son. And I now have the prosecutorial documents that show, all during that period of time, not only was Hunter Biden under investigation -- Joe Biden was under investigation," Giuliani explained. "It wasn't just Hunter."

Watch this clip to get a rundown of everything Giuliani has uncovered so far.

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Revealing Bernie’s dark side — one 1980s quote at a time

For most Americans, the 1980s was marked by big hair, epic lightsaber battles, and school-skipping Ferris Bueller dancing his way into the hearts of millions.

But for Bernie Sanders — who, by the way, was at that time the oldest-looking 40-year-old in human history — the 1980s was a period of important personal milestones.

Prior to his successful 1980 campaign to become mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders was mostly known around the Green Mountain State as a crazy, wildly idealistic socialist. (Think Karl Marx meets Don Quixote.) But everything started to change for Sanders when he became famous—or, in the eyes of many, notorious—for being "America's socialist mayor."

As mayor, Sanders' radical ideas were finally given the attention he had always craved but couldn't manage to capture. This makes this period of his career particularly interesting to study. Unlike today, the Bernie Sanders of the 1980s wasn't concerned with winning over an entire nation — just the wave of far-left New York City exiles that flooded Vermont in the 1960s and 1970s — and he was much more willing to openly align himself with local and national socialist and communist parties.

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Over the past few weeks, I have been reading news reports of Sanders recorded in the 1980s — because, you know, that's how guys like me spend their Saturday nights — and what I've found is pretty remarkable.

For starters, Sanders had (during the height of the Soviet Union) a very cozy relationship with people who openly advocated for Marxism and communism. He was an elector for the Socialist Workers Party and promoted the party's presidential candidates in 1980 and 1984.

To say the Socialist Workers Party was radical would be a tremendous understatement. It was widely known SWP was a communist organization mostly dedicated to the teachings of Marx and Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution.

Among other radical things I've discovered in interviews Sanders conducted with the SWP's newspaper — appropriately named The Militant (seriously, you can't make this stuff up) — is a statement by Sanders published in June 1981 suggesting that some police departments "are dominated by fascists and Nazis," a comment that is just now being rediscovered for the first time in decades.

In 1980, Sanders lauded the Socialist Workers Party's "continued defense of the Cuban revolution." And later in the 1980s, Sanders reportedly endorsed a collection of speeches by the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, even though there had been widespread media reports of the Sandinistas' many human rights violations prior to Sanders' endorsement, including "restrictions on free movement; torture; denial of due process; lack of freedom of thought, conscience and religion; denial of the right of association and of free labor unions."

Sanders also traveled to Nicaragua and met with socialist President Daniel Ortega. He later called the trip a "profoundly emotional experience."

Comrade Bernie's disturbing Marxist past, which is far more extensive than what can be covered in this short article, shouldn't be treated as a mere historical footnote. It clearly illustrates that Sanders' brand of "democratic socialism" is much more than a $15 minimum wage and calls for single-payer health care. It's full of Marxist philosophy, radical revolutionary thinking, anti-police rhetoric, and even support for authoritarian governments.

Millions of Americans have been tricked into thinking Sanders isn't the radical communist the historical record — and even Sanders' own words — clearly show that he is. But the deeper I have dug into Comrade Bernie's past, the more evident it has become that his thinking is much darker and more dangerous and twisted than many of his followers ever imagined.

Tomorrow night, don't miss Glenn Beck's special exposing the radicals who are running Bernie Sanders' campaign. From top to bottom, his campaign is staffed with hard-left extremists who are eager to burn down the system. The threat to our constitution is very real from Bernie's team, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before in a U.S. election. Join Glenn on Wednesday, at 9 PM Eastern on BlazeTV's YouTube page, and on BlazeTV.com. And just in case you miss it live, the only way to catch all of Glenn's specials on-demand is by subscribing to Blaze TV.

Justin Haskins (Jhaskins@heartland.org) is editorial director of The Heartland Institute and editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com.

Candace Owens blasts leftist cancel culture: 'Godless', 'societal atom bomb'

Candace Owens, BLEXIT founder and author of the upcoming book, "Blackout," joined Glenn Beck on Friday's GlennTV for an exclusive interview. available only to BlazeTV subscribers.

Candace dropped a few truth-bombs about the progressive movement and what's happening to the Democratic Party. She said people are practically running away from the left due to their incessant push to dig up dirt on anybody who disagrees with their radical ideology. She explained how -- like China and its "social credit score" -- the left is shaping America into its own nightmarish episode of "Black Mirror."

"This game of making sure that everyone is politically correct is a societal atom bomb. There are no survivors. There's no one that is perfect," Candace said. "The idea that humanity can be perfect is Godless. If you accept that there is something greater than us, then you accept that we a flawed. To be human is to be flawed."

Enjoy this clip from the full episode below:

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BlazeTV subscribers can watch the full interview on BlazeTV.com. Use code GLENN to save $10 off one year of your subscription.