Is America building a "virtual Berlin Wall"? Glenn talks to Overstock.com CEO about business under a progressive administration

Glenn: I had an e-mail from a friend last night who said that they were in an argument with somebody over “economic patriotism,” the idea of loyalty oaths, and he said I proudly stood beside you the whole time on this one because that’s not a solution to anything good. The idea of loyalty oaths and being patriotic by staying in a country is a way for us to build a virtual Berlin Wall. When a country says you’ve got to stay here, you’re forced to stay here or we’re going to penalize you or destroy you, that is in effect a Berlin Wall, and that’s not American principles.

We have Patrick Byrne here. He is from Overstock.com, rather outspoken. Thought I would pick your brain on this because I think that what everybody is looking at, it bothers me, and it’s always bothered me when the right has done it. If you go back and look at all of my sets, I’ve never had a flag on the set. I don’t like flag-waving. And we’re talking about economic patriotism, and we’re not talking about solving the real solutions.

So tell me, we have the highest income taxes in the world now for corporate income tax, but we also have other problems. I think we’re starting to look unstable to the rest of the world even though we are still probably the most stable or going instable. What should we be doing?

Patrick: As far as?

Glenn: Keep people here, to keep companies here?

Patrick: Well, you know, you’re a businessman. I’m a businessman. I’d love to be able to raise my prices and say no one can leave, no one can defect. This country was built on exactly the opposite principle, that we were going to have the most competitive environment. And you know, now our corporate tax rates are basically 40% federal and state, and we’re up against people who are taxing at 15%.

And it’s just natural, people, you know, you raise the price of something, people buy less of it. People forget that taxes are not, you know, chiseled on stone and come down from the gods. Taxes are just the name for the price that government charges for their services. And when you raise your prices, people buy less of your service, and that includes the government. So they’ve made it really uncompetitive for multinational companies to stay. It’s becoming more and more irrational.

Glenn: They will try to say that companies don’t have a responsibility to their shareholders, they have a responsibility to their country.

Patrick: This whole talk frankly of economic patriotism scares me. I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but it’s nut-job talk. And loyalty oaths, I see Jonathan Alter did some story about –

Glenn: It’s crazy.

Patrick: The actual intellectual roots of this stuff is in Benito Mussolini. That’s where that –

Glenn: Can I tell you something? I know this sounds horrible to say, we just talked about it, that is what the FDR administration said. With the blue eagle, they said it is fascistic. That’s before we thought Mussolini was a bad guy, and they’ve erased all of that now. But that’s on the record, it’s fascistic to do that. That’s not in line with our principles.

Patrick: Well, people forget the far left and the far right meet at the bottom. Benito Mussolini was a hard left socialist in Italy. He was a prominent, not just prominent, he was one of the leaders of the, he was part of the Marxist communist takeover of the socialist party, and then he came out of World War II still a hard left socialist but decided, you know, he came up with this new theory that included nationalism, a very nationalistic version of socialism. But he was very popular in the United States in the 1920s and 30s. You probably know that Cole Porter song, 'You’re the Top'.

Glenn: Yeah.

Patrick: If you look up the lyrics, it includes you’re the top, you’re the great Houdini, you’re the top, you’re my Mussolini. And Mussolini was very well-regarded in this country until 1935 when he invaded Ethiopia. And FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, consciously modeled the New Deal and the National Recovery Act on the state corporatism that Benito Mussolini was arguing for.

I know this all sounds so weird to Americans now, but go back, and there’s a book by David Boaz at the Cato Institute about the link, the deep intellectual link and the influence that Mussolini had not only on Hitler, of course, but Roosevelt.

Glenn: I will tell you, you know, what frightens me is we look at what’s happening here, communism was a global takeover, you know, the international communists. Fascistic tendency was a national, but it was both socialism, both socialism –

Patrick: Well, Nazi-ism, it’s an abbreviation for National Socialism.

Glenn: Right, so you have that. We’re looking now at a world that in some ways is parallel. We had to pick, do we like the fascist or do we like the communist? We picked, well, we like the communist better, so we’ll get into bed with a communist to defeat the fascist. That’s World War II. We’re now looking in the Middle East, we like Saudi Arabia better than we like Iran, but they both want to control with a religious ideology that we reject, but yet we’re going to get in bed with one of them. We have to be careful on what our values are.

Patrick: They’re both anti-liberal. Believe it or not, you know, as you know, what you and I are are actually liberals, classical liberals. That’s the correct Milton Friedman, Thomas Jefferson, that’s classical liberalism, the idea that you don’t have an over-powerful state. Now, the word liberal got hijacked in the 1930s and 40s and has come to mean in the United States just the opposite, but in Europe, liberal is still used to mean what we are.

Glenn: Correct.

Patrick: But you’re absolutely correct. It’s a part of history that is neglected, but the deep intellectual connection and common roots of the fascistic tradition and the socialist or communist tradition, and when I hear talk of economic patriotism, I’m hearing Mussolini. The whole corporatism philosophy that he preached used terms like that.

Glenn: In that particular article by Jon Alter, he mentioned, you know, even McCarthyism, that the GOP should be, you know, looking at McCarthyism. No, we shouldn’t be. Nobody should be. And I don’t think the GOP would be all that different than the Democrats. They’d just take it in a different direction, but they would both be…the Patriot Act, wrap yourself in the flag, and you can get away with just about anything.

Patrick: I can’t believe some of this stuff is happening in our country, that we’re seeing that the discourse has taken this turn really in the last 20 years and that there aren’t more people understanding, you know, the historical roots of what it is we’re doing.

Glenn: But don’t you think that, and it’s like this with, I mean, how many times has communism tried and been failed? Everybody says well okay, yeah, but Mussolini went bad, yeah, but, you know, Stalin went bad. And so it’s always it’s not going to be that way, because people want to believe in a utopia. They want to believe that that stuff would work, that we could all live like it, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

Patrick: There’s a great quote from Adam Smith about how the man of systems, what he calls meaning a heavy ideologue, people who have like systems they want to impose on society, they seem to imagine society like it’s a great chessboard and that they can just move the pieces around. They forget that in the case of humans, those pieces have their own internal motivations, and they want to, you know, they can’t just be shuffled around like pieces on a chessboard.

And so these heavy ideological approaches, really they look very similar to me. And the liberal, the traditional classical liberal or what’s sometimes called libertarianism now, they’re pretty related, was the idea that no, we won’t have this overpowering government that’s demanding. We’ll form a government that serves us, not that we serve it. Anybody who is talking about economic patriotism is taking as their background assumption that it’s our function to serve the government rather than forgetting, you know, or they forget that no, we’re the primary –

Glenn: So the government comes to you and says we need you to sign this loyalty oath.

Patrick: I won’t sign a loyalty oath.

Glenn: They threaten to close you down, whatever pressure they would have to, you ever sign a loyalty oath?

Patrick: Never, never, never. No, I would laugh them out of the office.

Glenn: Does that make you un-American?

Patrick: No, I think I’m patriotic. I remember what the organizing principles of our republic are, and they include that, you know, we form, Milton Friedman had a great saying on this. Remember John F. Kennedy said something about in his inaugural address ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Milton Friedman, greatest friend of freedom in the 20th century, said that that would be, something like that could never be said in a state that still understood what freedom was because in our tradition we are, you know, we’re the primary actors, but we form this entity, the government, in order to secure our freedom.

So that’s like a plumber, you’ve hired a plumber to come and do something, the plumber does a lousy job, costs a lot of money, and when you try to criticize him says hey, don’t ask what I can do for you, ask what you can do for me. You’d say this plumber had gotten too big for his britches.

Glenn: Can I tell you a better way of saying it then…not that, that’s a great explanation, I mean but to change what John F. Kennedy said? Because I think what most people think is don’t keep taking, let’s figure out what we can do for each other, not the country but each other. It’s more of the idea of Ben Franklin, there is a God, he’s going to judge us, best way to serve him is to serve our fellow man. That’s the American religion. That’s the American ethic, let’s help each other.

Patrick: And to do that we needed government, and we needed limited government that’s going to perform certain functions we can’t do individually. We can’t defend our borders individually. You know, you don’t want to be your own policemen and court system.

So you need a government to do things, but let’s remember, it’s just this entity that we created, and to have it say oh no, you don’t understand, you’re supposed to be, you know, happy to pay us 40% of your income, corporate America, and if you don’t, you’re not patriotic, you have forgotten that you serve us.

That betrays that this worldview has gotten so skewed that they think, they’ve just gotten big for their britches. They’re like the plumber who’s saying, you know, don’t ask what you can do for me, ask what I can do for you.

Glenn: Thank you very much.

Patrick: Oh, thank you, Glenn.

 

SHOCKING: 11 states where Hunter Biden is accused of DISGUSTING crimes

Kris Connor / Contributor | Getty Images

Glenn has been calling on our leaders to do what they SHOULD have done a long time ago: hold Hunter Biden accountable for his BLATANT crimes.

Of which crimes is Hunter Biden being accused? From hiring prostitutes to smoking cocaine... LOTS of cocaine... here is a state-by-state list of ALL crimes committed by Hunter Biden. To read about each crime in detail, Glenn's "The Reckoning" guide lists ALL of Hunter Biden's crimes committed domestically and abroad alongside the alleged crimes of all the Biden family members, including Joe.

Glenn needs YOUR help to hold the "Biden crime family" accountable. Click HERE to download "The Reckoning" dossier of ALL of the crimes committed by the Biden family, send the dossier to your representative, and DEMAND they hold the Biden family accountable for their crimes.

In the meantime, here is a sneak peek of ALL of Hunter Biden's known sex and drug crimes committed within the U.S.

1. Arizona

Drug Crimes: One count.

2. California

Drug Crimes: 6 counts.

Sex Crimes: 20 counts.

3. Connecticut

Drug Crimes: 4 counts.

Sex Crimes: 11 counts.

4. Delaware

Drug Crimes: 9 counts.

Sex Crimes: 3 counts.

5. Florida

​​Drug Crimes: 1 count.

Sex Crimes: 1 count.

6. Massachusetts

Drug Crimes: 4 counts.

Sex Crimes: 4 counts.

7. Nevada

Drug Crimes: 1 count.

Sex Crimes: 2 counts.

8. New York

Drug Crimes: 2 counts.

Sex Crimes: 12 counts.

9. Tennessee

Drug Crimes: 1 count.

10. Texas

Sex Crimes: 1 count.

11. Virginia

Drug Crimes: 1 count.

It’s no secret that Glenn has a less-than-optimistic view of emerging AI and when you look at the horrifying new technologies that utilize the power of AI it’s hard not to agree.

Here’s a look at 7 new AI technologies that will HORRIFY you:

AI Brainwave Monitoring

Earlier this year during the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, Nita Robinson, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke, presented a video that depicted a “hypothetical” situation where a person's brainwaves are monitored by their earbuds, which have the ability to record brainwaves, decode them with AI, and then send brain reports to their boss and are accessible by government agencies. When the video ends, Robinson makes the terrifying announcement that this AI technology already exists! It's just a matter of time before it's implemented.

If you want to learn more about Brainwave tracking and the WEF, you can watch this clip from the Glenn Beck Program.

AI Voice Cloning

Last month, Glenn covered a terrifying story involving a scammer who created an AI clone of a child's voice in order to scam money out of her terrified parents. While this might sound advanced, a quick Google search reveals that this technology is remarkably accessible and is easily able to replicate the voice of anyone. Imagine the havoc that could be inflicted on your life with an AI clone of your voice.

AI Mind Reader

Left shows stories read to user and right shows what the AI was able to decode from users brain activity

Image credit: University of Texas at Austin

Like something out of Star Trek, a team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin developed a new AI that is able to decode brain activity and produce a transcript of a person's thoughts with reasonable accuracy, all without the need for implants or other invasive measures. While the researchers assure us that the technology has major limitations, including the need to train this AI extensively on each subject's brain, it’s only a matter of time before the AI is able to overcome these limitations, and it may be sooner than we would like…

Snapchat's new AI “Friend”

Image of My AI's contact on Snapchat

Snapchat

In April the popular social media messaging app Snapchat released a controversial new feature known as “My AI”—an AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT. The new feature acts much like other chatbots. It can answer questions, converse with the user, and offer recommendations. However, unlike other chatbots, it is integrated in such a way that it can be difficult to distinguish from a human user, complete with a customizable avatar and name. Many parents are worried that the friendly appearance of “My AI” will make it hard for their teens to differentiate the bot from a real human. Moreover, the only way to remove the bot is by paying for Snapchat’s premium service, giving parents little recourse for protecting their children.

AI "Big Brother"

In a recent TED talk, former Apple Designer Imran Chaudhri introduced the concept for a new wearable AI device connected to a camera and microphone, enabling the AI to hear and see everything you do. Chaudhri assures us that the device is “privacy-first and safe,” but how safe would you feel with an all-seeing AI accompanying you all day every day?

AI Meddling with Elections

AI generated image of Trump's arrest

Open AI | MARCA News

One terrifying potential use for AI could be meddling with elections. The last few years have seen a decline in faith in our elections, and the emergence of AI will only serve to muddy the waters. As previously mentioned, AI voice clones are here and have been proven to have the ability to create compelling facsimiles of political figures. Combined with AI image technology the threat of an AI-generated scandal is high.

If you want to learn more about AI interference with elections you can watch this clip from the Glenn Beck Program.

AI Dating

Another disturbing development is the creation of “Dating AIs”—AI chatbots designed as a replacement for a boyfriend or girlfriend. There is already a variety of options available with prices ranging from free all the way up to $1 a minute, like some sort of dystopian "call girl." There are already reports of people developing genuine emotional attachments to these bots and others who have married or have tried to marry their artificial lovers.

Global ESG investments PLUNGED 76 percent with NEGATIVE returns on investment

SOPA Images / Contributor | Getty Images

Glenn has been one of the most outspoken critics of the use of ESG by globalist elites to force businesses to comply with their woke agenda. It turns out, not only is ESG bad political practice—it's bad for your wallet too.

Global Investments in ESG Funds PLUNGED 76 percent globally in 2022 from $157.3 billion to $649.1 billion in 2021, with a 20 percent decrease in the U.S. ALONE. This marked the lowest annual net inflow for ESG funds since $69 billion in 2018.


Morningstar via Investopedia

The downturn in ESG investment is largely due to the concerted effort led against ESG led by Glenn and government officials like Ron DeSantis and his anti-ESG 14-state coalition. Thanks to Glenn and DeSantis, an increasing number of states are barring their governments from taking ESG into consideration when determining their investment recipients for state pension and retirement funds. This not only protects critical American industries like oil and gas, but moreover, it protects the First Amendment rights of business owners who don't want to conform to the Left's woke environmentalist and LGBTQ+ standards.

Thanks to Glenn and DeSantis, an increasing number of states are barring their governments from taking ESG into consideration.

However, the massive plunge in ESG investment isn't only attributed to the political pushback against the practice: it also isn't yielding investors the return on investment they were hoping for. In fact, the main ESG funds have a NEGATIVE return on investment.

ESG funds were hit hard by falling equities. One of the largest ESG funds int the U.S., Parnassus Core Equity Fund (PRBLX), fell 26 PERCENT in 2022. This fund performed nearly six percent worse than the S&P 500, which fell 19.44 percent within the same period. Similarly, iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF (ESGU) fell 20 percent, and Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF (ESGV) plummeted 24 percent.

Even the Harvard Business Review admitted investors in ESG have "not fared well":

ESG funds certainly perform poorly in financial terms. [...] Although the highest rated funds in terms of sustainability certainly attracted more capital than the lowest rated funds, none of the high sustainability funds outperformed any of the lowest rated funds [bolded added]. That result might be expected, and it is possible that investors would be happy to sacrifice financial returns in exchange for better ESG performance.

The Harvard Business Review went on to say that ESG funds don't even benefit the environmental and social causes they tout to defend. In fact, when comparing environmental and social compliance between ESG and non-ESG funds, the
"ESG portfolios had worse compliance record for both labor and environmental rules" than their non-ESG competitors.

Let that sink in. ESG funds not only financially underperformed when compared to their non-ESG competitors. They failed to secure the very environmental and social compliance that is central to their original purpose. Missionally, practically, and financially, ESG failure is astounding.

As Glenn has long warned, the only thing that investment firms and governments should be taking into consideration regarding YOUR money is how they can get the best possible return on YOUR investment. We are seeing the detrimental consequences of what happens when woke ideology becomes the basis of investment rather than the recipient's monetary value.

The only thing that governments should take into consideration regarding YOUR money is how to get the best possible return on YOUR investment.

If political conviction alone isn't enough to persuade the general public to ditch ESG, maybe their hurting pursestrings will.

Glenn will show how ESG is being used to further globalist elites' agendas in the second installment of his Great Reset series, Dark Future.To make sure you're caught up and to learn more about ESG, enter your email below to get chapter one of Glenn's first Great Reset book sent straight to your inbox.

You've probably noticed that Glenn is FED UP.

He is FED UP with the crimes that our political elite can get away with. And NO ONE is keeping them accountable! This corruption goes all the way up to the Presidency. Over and over again, the American people have seen headlines of the Biden family's illicit business dealings and crimes both domestic and abroad, yet they ALWAYS get a free pass from the media, and Republicans who promise to hold them accountable, DON'T.

Are you FED UP too?

Glenn laid out the ENTIRE CASE against the "Biden crime family," detailing EVERY crime allegedly committed by the Bidens, going city by city, state by state, country by country.

But we can't stop there.

Now it's up to YOU to demand that they are held responsible. Here's what to do:

  • Step 1. Watch "The Reckoning" (on YouTube or Facebook) and share it with your friends.
  • Step 2.Enter your email HERE to get access to the "Biden Crime Family Dossier" with the full list of crimes and contact information for prosecutors and attorneys general.
  • Step 3. Take action by flooding the phones and emails of the prosecutors and attorneys general in your district and demand they prosecute these crimes.
  • Step 4. Once you've contacted the offices in your relevant district, tweet @glennbeck using the hashtag #Reckoning and let us know who you contacted and whether you received a response.

Like you, Glenn is SICK AND TIRED of our government and media giving the Biden family a free pass for their blatant crimes. Together, let's do something about it.

Watch "The Reckoning" below.