You won't believe the deadly game being played by teenagers

November 15, 2013

Writer

Now, the last few weeks, we’ve been kind of drifting into a new direction on trying to find people who see the world in a different way and then can equip you to deal with what’s coming. Yesterday, we had Mike Rowe back on the program. He is leading Americans in the right direction, encouraging people to forge their own path, embracing the idea that yes, hard work, hard work makes a difference, and if you work hard first, you will reap rewards later, the once-valued concept of merit and earning something that has been lost.

America is now the exact opposite. People come out of college. They think they deserve a high-paying job, a corner office, a big home, fancy car. I mean, you know, when my kids were trying to find a house, they couldn’t understand well, wait a minute, but I want to have a nice house. Well, yeah, so did your mom and I when we were starting out. We didn’t have one. We had to work a long time, and my parents’ generation, they worked their whole lives to be able to have a house.

That is kind of lost now. The mindset of I want it now is why we have a stagnant economy filled with entitlement, not entrepreneurs. Instead of the Greatest Generation, we now have the self-described I am the greatest generation. Our grandparents and our great-grandparents didn’t come up with that title themselves. In fact, I think they would have shunned it. They were busy earning that title.

Today, many people in America don’t try because they’re constantly told you can’t make it, you’ll never make it, don’t, that’s a stupid idea, why, you’ll never succeed. Michael Moore tells people this in his movies. Even the president says that, even though both of them have managed to become wildly successful. Yet, for some reason they say to everybody else you can’t.

People are also told that they are awesome, and they deserve the very best. You’re not going to be able to make it on your own, but you deserve the very best, so vote for me, and I’ll be the person who gives it to you. The problems that we have in this country are so overwhelming that many people just say, “I’m just going to give up.”

I was having dinner last week with a friend of mine, really a just wonderful couple that has raised remarkable children. And he said to me, “Glenn, you know what, I’m just to the point where I’m just like, I’m just going to take care of my family.” Yes, bingo! That’s how you right the ship. It all starts at home.

Farming out parenting to teachers, farming out morals or whatever to TV just doesn’t work. We’ve tried all of that, and look where it got us. Do you remember the good old days when billboard ads were for bread or soda or something? In Detroit, this is now a billboard, “Thou shall not kill.” Hey, everybody, let’s not kill everybody, okay? That’s amazing.

There’s a new game out now that’s popular among teens. It’s called “knockout,” and believe it or not, it’s worse than it sounds. A group of teens walk around and pick out a person walking alone, and they just try to knock them out with one punch. Who can do it next? There’s also been a rash of anti-Semitic attacks in Brooklyn, including another one last night. It’s believed to be a version of knockout called “knockout the Jew,” where teens go around, and they look for Jewish people. And when they find them, they knock them out.

So what’s happened to us? How did we get here? Well, it is the product of all of us who think that we could have it all, and so we were apathetic or absent parents. Or we are parents that are so overwhelmed, and we believe the lie that gee, the experts know better, so I’m going to listen to them. Or we’ve allowed the virtual world to invade our home and churn out thugs with no sense of humanity. And it’s only going to get worse.

And then of course there’s the schools. Common Core is now helping further destroy education, which is not going to make things better. I don’t know if you read on TheBlaze today, they are now dropping cursive writing because, you know, cursive writing, there’s nothing important at all to read that has been written in cursive. I mean, why would you put anything in cursive writing if it’s really important?

Oh, how are our kids going to be able to read your words? How are your kids going to be able to read the founders’ words? Well, we live in a digital age. We shared this story on our Facebook page. We’d like you to tell us what you think about it. We think it’s extraordinarily dangerous.

I don’t know about you, but my kids don’t need any help figuring out the iPad and the computer. If anybody needs to do that, it would be me, not them. They’re addicted to it like crack, and they figure out how to use it themselves. They don’t need help with the digital age. They live it.

But more importantly, there’s a new study out that shows that kids who use computers frequently or have access to computers in their room, increased anxiety and stress is a big part of their life. Why? Because they’re being raised in a virtual world and missing out on the real one all around them. They’re empty inside, and they know it.

Now, at least one Florida mom gets it. Another story today, she was quite upset when her son made the honor roll. You’d say well, that doesn’t make sense. Well, the honor roll is apparently three A’s, a C, and a D. She was “furious and appalled” that he was rewarded for the C and the D. She had punished him in order to teach him, but the school gave him a little gift and said you’re exceptional. You go girl or boy, whichever you choose to be today, but you know, who are we to judge? And they rewarded him. For what, mediocrity? Three A’s, a C, and a D, that’s the honor roll?

We shelter them from the real world, allow them to live in a virtual world with no consequences, but when they get into the real world, I don’t know about you, but if I have people who are working here, and they get three A’s, a C, and a D, if they get that the next quarter, they’re not going to be working here. If I get that, you’re not going to be watching.

We have to teach our children the truth. We have to teach our children right and wrong, and to continue to prop up D students and stamp them as honor roll material, you can expect the I am generation failure to continue.

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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.