The most important thing we can do is empower ourselves and others

November 18, 2013

Writer

Tonight on TV, Glenn opened the show discussing a personal epiphany he had over the weekend. While TheBlaze will continue to be a daily source of news and information, Glenn said that the network and his show would also be a place for empowerment. Sometimes that means personal empowerment, and other times Glenn and TheBlaze will provide viewers, listeners, and readers with the tools to empower others.

Glenn specifically looked to Jesus as an inspiration, especially if you look at the story of Jesus through the eyes of the people who lived during his time on Earth. During Jesus's time on Earth, he didn't focus on politics or economics or anything else - he focused on helping others and empowering them, and that is the approach that Glenn plans to take going forward as well.

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You know, some of the things that we have done in the past, I want to talk to you about, because you’re going to find these things honestly, you’re going to “duh,” but for me, it’s been kind of a big deal and has been really hard. It’s been a hard four years for me because I haven’t understood exactly what I was doing or what I was supposed to do, and in the coming weeks I’ll explain it a little bit.

Maybe we’ll just do a show just on this, but I haven’t understood because quite honestly I was overthinking things. And you know, when we first started this network, we did Being George Washington. And I did that, and I did that with, you know, my son. And we took it seriously, but I have to revisit that myself. And I want to talk to you about some of these things.

This network and this show, we’re going to be a source of information and news and everything else, but the most important thing we can do is empower people, for me to empower myself, empower you, and you to empower yourself and others.

I think you’ve seen this kind of coming in a way. We’ve had Srinivas Rau on, Malcolm Gladwell, Mike Rowe, and if you’ve been paying attention, you notice that the theme has been for the last month or so that don’t believe all the old posters of the past, you know? Everything that you think you knew is not true anymore, and don’t believe anyone who tells you that there are giants you cannot defeat, that Goliath is too big for you.

If I asked the world who is the biggest revolutionary in the world, I guess Americans might say it was Thomas Paine or Sam Adams. Some might think of Che, but I’d fall closer into the categories of MLK and Gandhi and mainly the one they based their lives on, the original revolutionary, I think, the one who really changed the world.

If you go back, and you look, and this is where I’ve been in the last month. I’ve really been trying to look at some things from the point of view of the people who lived it at the time. And if you go back to those original revolutionary days, the people in ancient Israel expected a warrior king. If you look at the Middle East, Muhammad was a warrior, you know, riding on his horse and riding into battle. If you look at the Middle East even now, all the biggest icons are warriors.

That’s why the revolutionary, forget about all the Bible stuff, just as a person, that’s why the Jesus character is so important, because he stands alone as the oddball. But the people of his day expected him to be a warrior, and I think that’s why some of them were shouting for his death because they knew he wasn’t going to do it. He wasn’t going to be a warrior king.

It’s easy to read his story now and see him from the perspective of what we now understand or what the writers of the Scriptures even said, but I don’t want you to look at him that way. I want you to look at him through the eyes of the people back then.

I wrote this, in fact why don’t you bring the camera in here for a second. I wrote this this weekend, and I want to show you this. What was he really all about? He did not worry about politics. He never worried about the economy. He never worried about his popularity, ever. The regional politics, it was like the Democrats and the Tea Party today.

The people who were poor, yeah, there were people who were poor, and they were sick. You don’t think people worried about their health care coverage? What do you think the pools of Bethesda were? But I don’t see any words where he’s talking about high taxes or politics or popularity or poles or reelection or anything. He never talked about you know, if I say this, is this going to hurt my business? He never talked about politically correct stuff, none of that.

So what did he do? He empowered people, empowered people. And one of the things he said that strikes me because everybody skips it, you know, paraphrasing here, he says, you know, hey, you know, I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff, huh? Right? Greater things than these you will do. What’s he saying? He’s empowering everybody around him. He is telling them you have the power.

I made a list of these things this weekend, and the things that he did and didn’t do, the things that we’re always talking about every day. He never talked about people, about anything that we are doing. Here’s what he did talk about. He loved his enemies. He taught truth. He lived truth. He helped others to live peaceful lives. He empowered others. He spoke only of what his father told him to tell you. He comforted. He lifted up. He mourned, and he healed others.

That’s it, tell people love each other. Tell people to believe and believe in themselves. Tell people to have faith, hope, and charity. The reason why he was the biggest revolutionary of all is because he changed everything. And it dawned on me this weekend, what makes us think that that won’t work again?

If I may, Occupy Wall Street is paying off people’s loans. What do you think that is? The Golden Dawn Party is now buying people food. In Greece, they’re going door to door, providing food. Well, where do you think they got that idea? Why do they think that will work? Because it worked before. It works every time. But they will fail because their purpose is politics. That’s not what it’s supposed to be, and that’s not what our purpose can be or should be.

I wanted to take just a second before we get into the real show tonight to try to tell you that I’d like to take you on a journey with me over the next couple of months, and I don’t know where it’s going to take us. I don’t know, but I need to be a much better man than I am. I will tell you that I’m a shell of the man of who I need to be and who I want to be, and I will bet you that in your honest hours, you would say the same. I know I can do better. I know I can be better, and I know I have to.

The enemies of man’s freedom are doing everything they can right now to tell everyone you have to go through me. You’re incapable of doing things yourself. You need permits, and you need handouts. You need our help. We have to be the beachhead of the exact opposite message. That’s what I wrote in this journal. That’s it.

The world’s greatest revolutionary only empowered people. That is my goal. That has to be the goal of this show through education, information, through every means possible to empower ourselves, for us to empower you, and to remind you at all times that you hold all the cards. You hold all the keys. You have absolutely everything you need to accomplish whatever it is you set out to do, especially in today’s world, but people don’t understand that.

I spoke to…oh, I don’t even know. Joe, how many people were at that meeting on Friday? I bet there was 150 people there. They were all people from State Houses from all over the country, and I told them do you realize how freaked out the authoritarians are because of technology? That’s why they’re trying to grab it all. They know if they don’t control technology, they lose.

Just look at business. Business, you can print a T-shirt and sell it on the other side of the world, and you can do it that fast. Globally I can do whatever it is I love, and I can do business in my underpants in my mom’s basement if I have to. The world has changed. So have we. But we have to do more, and it begins with recognizing who we are, what we need to be, and empower ourselves and everyone else we know.

Could China OWN our National Parks?

Jonathan Newton / Contributor | Getty Images

The left’s idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Lee’s vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.

The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.

Here’s what’s really happening.

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.

The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.

Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.

Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.

Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.

Failed management

Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.

Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.

So what do they do when the herd gets too big?

They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.

And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?

Biden’s federal land-grab

Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.

The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.

That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.

You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.

Land as collateral

Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.

What happens if America defaults on its debt?

David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images

Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.

This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.

The American way

There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.

Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.

Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.

This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.

So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.

Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

EXPOSED: Why the left’s trans agenda just CRASHED at SCOTUS

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

You never know what you’re going to get with the U.S. Supreme Court these days.

For all of the Left’s insane panic over having six supposedly conservative justices on the court, the decisions have been much more of a mixed bag. But thank God – sincerely – there was a seismic win for common sense at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. It’s a win for American children, parents, and for truth itself.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s state ban on irreversible transgender procedures for minors.

The mostly conservative justices stood tall in this case, while Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson predictably dissented. This isn’t just Tennessee’s victory – 20 other red states that have similar bans can now breathe easier, knowing they can protect vulnerable children from these sick, experimental, life-altering procedures.

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, saying Tennessee’s law does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. It’s rooted in a very simple truth that common sense Americans get: kids cannot consent to permanent damage. The science backs this up – Norway, Finland, and the UK have all sounded alarms about the lack of evidence for so-called “gender-affirming care.” The Trump administration’s recent HHS report shredded the activist claims that these treatments help kids’ mental health. Nothing about this is “healthcare.” It is absolute harm.

The Left, the ACLU, and the Biden DOJ screamed “discrimination” and tried to twist the Constitution to force this radical ideology on our kids.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw through it this time. In her concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett nailed it: gender identity is not some fixed, immutable trait like race or sex. Detransitioners are speaking out, regretting the surgeries and hormones they were rushed into as teens. WPATH – the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the supposed experts on this, knew that kids cannot fully grasp this decision, and their own leaked documents prove that they knew it. But they pushed operations and treatments on kids anyway.

This decision is about protecting the innocent from a dangerous ideology that denies biology and reality. Tennessee’s Attorney General calls this a “landmark victory in defense of America’s children.” He’s right. This time at least, the Supreme Court refused to let judicial activism steal our kids’ futures. Now every state needs to follow Tennessee’s lead on this, and maybe the tide will continue to turn.

Insider alert: Glenn’s audience EXPOSES the riots’ dark truth

Barbara Davidson / Contributor | Getty Images

Glenn asked for YOUR take on the Los Angeles anti-ICE riots, and YOU responded with a thunderous verdict. Your answers to our recent Glennbeck.com poll cut through the establishment’s haze, revealing a profound skepticism of their narrative.

The results are undeniable: 98% of you believe taxpayer-funded NGOs are bankrolling these riots, a bold rejection of the claim that these are grassroots protests. Meanwhile, 99% dismiss the mainstream media’s coverage as woefully inadequate—can the official story survive such resounding doubt? And 99% of you view the involvement of socialist and Islamist groups as a growing threat to national security, signaling alarm at what Glenn calls a coordinated “Color Revolution” lurking beneath the surface.

You also stand firmly with decisive action: 99% support President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to quell the chaos. These numbers defy the elite’s tired excuses and reflect a demand for truth and accountability. Are your tax dollars being weaponized to destabilize America? You’ve answered with conviction.

Your voice sends a powerful message to those who dismiss the unrest as mere “protests.” You spoke, and Glenn listened. Keep shaping the conversation at Glennbeck.com.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

EXPOSED: Your tax dollars FUND Marxist riots in LA

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

Protesters wore Che shirts, waved foreign flags, and chanted Marxist slogans — but corporate media still peddles the ‘spontaneous outrage’ narrative.

I sat in front of the television this weekend, watching the glittering spectacle of corporate media do what it does best: tell me not to believe my lying eyes.

According to the polished news anchors, what I was witnessing in Los Angeles was “mostly peaceful protests.” They said it with all the earnest gravitas of someone reading a bedtime story, while behind them the streets looked like a deleted scene from “Mad Max.” Federal agents dodged concrete slabs as if it were an Olympic sport. A man in a Che Guevara crop top tried to set a police car on fire. Dumpster fires lit the night sky like some sort of postapocalyptic luau.

If you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

But sure, it was peaceful. Tear gas clouds and Molotov cocktails are apparently the incense and candles of this new civic religion.

The media expects us to play along — to nod solemnly while cities burn and to call it “activism.”

Let’s call this what it is: delusion.

Another ‘peaceful’ riot

If the Titanic “mostly floated” and the Hindenburg “mostly flew,” then yes, the latest L.A. riots are “mostly peaceful.” But history tends to care about those tiny details at the end — like icebergs and explosions.

The coverage was full of phrases like “spontaneous,” “grassroots,” and “organic,” as if these protests materialized from thin air. But many of the signs and banners looked like they’d been run off at ComradesKinkos.com — crisp print jobs with slogans promoting socialism, communism, and various anti-American regimes. Palestinian flags waved beside banners from Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and El Salvador. It was like someone looted a United Nations souvenir shop and turned it into a revolution starter pack.

And guess who funded it? You did.

According to at least one report, much of this so-called spontaneous rage fest was paid for with your tax dollars. Tens of millions of dollars from the Biden administration ensured your paycheck funded Trotsky cosplayers chucking firebombs at local coffee shops.

The same aging radicals from the 1970s — now armed with tenure, pensions, and book deals — are cheering from the sidelines, waxing poetic about how burning a squad car is “liberation.” These are the same folks who once wore tie-dye and flew to help guerrilla fighters and now applaud chaos under the banner of “progress.”

This is not progress. It is not protest. It’s certainly not justice or peace.

It’s an attempt to dismantle the American system — and if you dare say that out loud, you’re labeled a bigot, a fascist, or, worst of all, someone who notices reality.

And what sparked this taxpayer-funded riot? Enforcement against illegal immigrants — many of whom, according to official arrest records, are repeat violent offenders. These are not the “dreamers” or the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. These are criminals with long, violent rap sheets — allowed to remain free by a broken system that prioritizes ideology over public safety.

Photo by Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg | Getty Images

This is what people are rioting over — not the mistreatment of the innocent, but the arrest of the guilty. And in California, that’s apparently a cause for outrage.

The average American, according to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, is supposed to worry they’ll be next. But unless you’re in the habit of assaulting people, smuggling, or firing guns into people’s homes, you probably don’t have much to fear.

Still, if you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

The left has lost it

This is what happens when a culture loses its grip on reality. We begin to call arson “art,” lawlessness “liberation,” and criminals “community members.” We burn the good and excuse the evil — all while the media insists it’s just “vibes.”

But it’s not just vibes. It’s violence, paid for by you, endorsed by your elected officials, and whitewashed by newsrooms with more concern for hair and lighting than for truth.

This isn’t activism. This is anarchism. And Democratic politicians are fueling the flame.