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Glenn has two theories on why revolutionaries and protestors will fail

December 02, 2014
Wilson

Writer

Chaos erupted in Ferguson last week, and days after the grand jury declined to indict officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown, protests continue to take place there and across the country. Things have only escalated in recent days, with Louis Farrakhan loudly encouraging people to "tear this goddamn country up" over the decision. But Glenn said the protestors and revolutionaries like Farrakhan will ultimately fail, and he had two theories as to why.

Watch Farrakhan's comments below, and scroll down for Glenn's reaction:

GLENN: All right. So there's Louis Farrakhan. This is, quite honestly, stuff that is happening all across the country and the world. They're sewing these seeds and people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in particular are sewing these seeds. The president is even saying, hey, let's keep this protest on track. I'm not saying the president wants violence or anything else.

What I'm saying is they believe it will work to their advantage to have an uprising. It's no different, quite honestly, than Occupy Wall Street. When you think about what happened in Occupy Wall Street. How did that go? They were talking about revolution. They were talking about the 1 percent. They were doing everything they can to pit the rich against the poor. Now, they're pitting the white against the black.

What did they find from Occupy Wall Street? They found out there were enough people to stand out in the cold for a while. Then it got kind of call, but then it's starting to get chilly and I don't want any of this stuff that much. That's what happened. It just dissipated. It feel apart. They were shocked. That's when Frances Fox Piven came out and said, look, where is the outrage? Why are people not protesting?

Remember, the Cloward-Piven tragedy was based on the Watts Riots. I contend that what they did -- what the real radicals and revolutionaries did, when they saw we couldn't pit rich versus poor in America, because honestly most people in America have it pretty well off. Even if you're struggling, we're still in the top 1 percent as a nation. The poorest Americans are in the top 1 percent of the rest of the world.

PAT: And they aspire to one day have wealth. How can you hate wealthy people when you want to be one?

GLENN: Right. That didn't work. They went back to the drawing board. And they looked at the original Cloward and Piven tragedy and that was race. You have to get the race riot to happen. You have to get all that pent up hatred on race. And unleash that. And you know that this is the strategy because look at what's happening at the border. Look at what they've done in the last six months. Try to poke race, race, race, race. And as soon as we have any kind of shooting with police, they will look to exploit that any way they can.

Now, the people who are on the streets in Ferguson, a lot of those are not from Ferguson. The real organizers, the ones putting this together are from elsewhere, as we showed you yesterday, many of the attorneys are the attorneys from Occupy Wall Street. One of the attorneys said yesterday, Occupy Wall Street is the gift that just keeps on giving.

So you have a different scenario happening here than what's being reported. What's being reported is this spontaneous movement, the same thing they were saying about Occupy Wall Street. It wasn't spontaneous. It was coordinated. Same thing happening here. It's coordinated. It's happening all over the country and happening in all the typical hot spots where all the real radicals are. Now, you're hearing people like Louis Farrakhan ratcheting his people up. You hear the uber left. This will go the same way that Occupy Wall Street did.

And here's why: And there's two theories. And I'm hoping one of these are right. You get to pick which one I hope is right, and you get to pick which one you think is right.

The reason why the progressive movement took off in the first place is because - as we've talked about in the book Dreamers and Deceivers, about Upton Sinclair - there were calls for revolution. There were calls for revolution. Communist revolution. By 1919, the communist revolution happened in the Soviet Union and, even Woodrow Wilson said, that was a "glorious revolution". That was power to the people. Finally the Russian people would be free. And he loved it. Progressives believed at the time that communism or fascism. They were split, which one would work. They no longer believed in the Constitution. They no longer believed in the Declaration of Independence. They no longer believed that man could rule himself.

There needed to be a strong centralized government ruled by elites. They all agreed on that. This was the time before Hitler and Stalin and everything else, so you can give them the benefit of the doubt.

They saw this new way involving medicine, technology, and superior elites up at the top. And those people could control the masses. They could control the masses through advertising and through propaganda, and they could get the dummies to follow along because the elites knew the best way to handle the country and the world's affair and what the world should look like. They could also weed out the undesirables through things like Planned Parenthood, sterilization, medicine.

We look back and judge them. But don't. Look back with their eyes. They had never seen any mass slaughter at the time. But the people like Woodrow Wilson and the people at the beginning of the progressive movement, they knew one thing about the American people. That is, the American people are generally good. The American people do not want violent revolution.

So the communists and the fascists, both of them wanted to change the system, but both of them wanted the revolution.

The progressives and the Fabians over in Europe decided, no, revolution is the wrong way to go because people of the West, they don't want the blood in the streets. They don't want that revolution. They don't like that.

So we'll have to take this communism or fascism, one of these two, and we're going to give it to them at a bite size at a time because they'll eventually eat the whole thing. By the time they figure it out, it will be too late because we have propaganda, we have the systems, we have the levers of powers. And so we'll be able to feed it to them and be able to play these games -- like Saul Alinsky lines out -- we'll be able to play these games to keep them off the scent long enough until they finish the whole meal. We will progress towards our utopian society.

And, again, look back at the time before you knew about the Soviet Union and before you knew what would happen in Germany, when fascism and communism were a good thing. These people are still trying to progress there and there is still the debate about whether we should take it through revolution or we should take it through the levers of power -- the levers of government and seize power slowly through the system.

But both of them are on full speed because they don't trust one another. It's why you're seeing the president's people fall away from him. The real radicals. The Cornel Wests, if you will, of the world. They're falling away from the president. They're calling him a traitor. Why? Because they know what he believes, but he's fallen in the progressive camp and said, let's just take it one step at a time. Where the Cornel West people are like, take it. You have it, take it.

So the same argument that was happening in the 1919 era, Woodrow Wilson era, is still happening today between the radicals. They both -- they both agree on the destination, totalitarian government of some form. They just don't agree on the vehicle that will take them there and how long it will take them.

But I go back to their original premise: The American people don't like violence. They don't like revolution. They don't burn things down in the streets. They reject that. That's not just the progressives of the early 20th century. That's people like Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King knew, peaceful, peaceful marches. That was the secret. Not violence.

Malcolm X, now today our Malcolm X is Louis Farrakhan. Malcolm X knew the opposite. Take it. Take it. Burn it down. Take it. Cloward and Piven know the opposite. Take it, burn it down. Destroy it. Force them to have talks with you.

This is why it's going to fail. It will fail for one of two reasons. You decide which one, but it will be one of these two, I believe. You decide why -- which one of these will be the leading indicator. And if that's good.

But, one, it will fail because Martin Luther was right. The American people are better than this. The American people are not revolutionaries at heart. They're evolutionaries at heart. But they're not revolutionaries. They're not violent people. How many countries did Hitler need to take over and how many people did he need to kill before we were in that fight? Same thing with World War I.

By the way, both happened under progressive presidents. Why? How long did it take us to get to the Civil War? And did we really want to fight that? How long did it take us to get to the American Revolution? Twenty-five years?

This is not something -- we're not quick to run to the gun. We don't like revolution. We didn't embrace Occupy Wall Street because it didn't take very long to see that it was powered by hatred.

Americans reject things powered by hatred.

PAT: I like that reason.

GLENN: Here's the other reason.

And this may be the reason -- I'm holding my -- I'm holding on to the first reason. But it actually may be this.

We don't give a flying crap. We don't care that much anymore. We're lazy. I'm not -- I'll go out and steal a TV maybe. But I'm not -- revolution? I don't really care that much. We're lazy.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: We don't care enough about anything.

PAT: Including the revolutionaries?

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: Including the revolutionaries. They don't care enough to get off their dead butts, get away from the video game, and go ransack the town.

GLENN: Yeah. There's a few, but there's not very many.

Most of them are like, look, it's too cold. It's too hot. That's too much trouble. I got to drive, where? I have to do, what?

PAT: I will say this, last week when it got cold in Missouri, it settled the town down.

STU: That was some of the speculation by the protesters that they were waiting to release the decision until it got cold so people wouldn't come out and protest. I don't know if that's accurate.

PAT: It would be smart.

GLENN: It proves the point that I think both of these will play a role. That we are generally peace-loving people, but we're also pretty lazy.

STU: Once you have the TV and video game, there's nothing to get up and loot. You're already there.

GLENN: I'll stay home.

PAT: You wanted revolution so you could get the TV and video game. Now you have it. So don't worry about it.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.