Martin Luther King, Jr. may have been an imperfect man, but God made him a leader

January 20, 2015

WRITER

Below is a transcript of Glenn's opening monologue

The year was 1900, when a poet, not a famous poet at the time, his name was James Weldon Johnson, wrote this song, Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing. It became hugely popular in the black community, and its author, years and years later, became the organizer, the national organizer, for the NAACP.

This song became the Negro national anthem. That’s what people called it. It’s a song that I had never heard of until Alveda King taught it to me. I love this song, because it’s not a song about oppression. It’s a song about the “harmonies” of liberty. It’s not about raising our voice in anger or marching in the streets angry and burning things down. It’s about letting our rejoicing rise and letting it resound loud as the rolling sea, to quote the poem.

It’s a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, a song full of hope that the present has brought us. It was written at a time when we all still agreed on the good guys and the bad guys. This was written in 1900. It wasn’t written as the black national anthem, but it was written to commemorate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, the American Moses.

Here we sit on Martin Luther King Day, a day that should unite us, but I fear now in today’s America it divides us. Last week, I saw Oprah Winfrey’s movie Selma. I said that it was critical that every American go see it. The media seemed surprised by that statement. I don’t know why. Is it because I favor smaller government? Is it because I believe in personal responsibility? Why?

Martin Luther King is an exceptional American hero that belongs to all of us. He is our modern-day Abraham Lincoln, our modern-day Moses, delivering people from slavery. As we were planning the show today, I thought about all of the bizarre emails that I have seen and the bizarre Facebook posts that I have seen—very few. I am really proud to say very few, but enough, enough—the people who said, “How could you possibly like Martin Luther King?” And some of this I get, because the smear on him being a Communist. I don’t know if he was a Communist or not.

I don’t believe anybody about Martin Luther King. I don’t believe his family anymore on Martin Luther King. He is a business. Do you know that they couldn’t use the words of Martin Luther King in the movie because the Martin Luther King words are now copywritten, and you just can’t use them? There’s too much money involved, and I know that people have put words in my mouth or taken the words that I have said and twisted them so much I could look like anybody as well, and I’m still alive, so I’m not going to believe anybody.

I’ll talk to Martin when I get upstairs and I see him. But there are also people who say he’s not upstairs because he was a philanderer, you know? Yeah, he was. He was. He cheated on his wife, a really bad thing, which makes me wonder at first, thinking out loud, how could God use somebody like that? Pretty easily.

I think we all have our roles to play, and we all have opportunities, and there comes a time that we either step to the plate or we don’t. Most people don’t. Most people can talk a good game, but most people don’t. It’s those people who are the most comfortable. It’s those people who are the leaders who have the most to lose that usually don’t, because they’re comfortable.

It’s like the rich man that came to see Jesus. That story is not about his money. That story is about the guy coming in and saying “Don’t you guys know who I am?” Please, apostles, can’t you tell this Jesus cat who I am? I can help him here. I’ve got connections. I have power. I have influence. I have money. They’re going to kill him. And what does Jesus say? Go, leave all your stuff, come follow me.

I see that story as the guy looking again to the apostles and saying, “What the hell is wrong with this guy? Tell him who I am. I can help him.” How many people did God go to before Martin Luther King? They were like no, I’m not going to do that. That’s crazy. Listen to me. I can do this. I can do this. I have power. I have influence. As imperfect as MLK was, cheating on his wife, he at least said yes, I’ll pay the price. How many people said no before he got to that guy?

I want to talk to you about a cartoon world, not a real world, cartoon world, full of cartoon people. I’m a cartoon person. You’re a cartoon person. Black people are cartoon people. The people on the border coming across, they’re cartoon people. Everybody’s a cartoon person, and if you look at the world as cartoon people, black and white people, well, a cartoon white person will see the cartoon black person as somebody who’s lazy, who wants to steal, who lives off the state, right?

That’s the cartoon black person according to a cartoon white person, and the cartoon black person sees the cartoon white person as the oppressor, as a fat cat who is a Klan member, who’s an elitist, who never sees anything. That’s the cartoon world. No, I take that back. That’s the political world. That’s what we’re being taught. Listen to that—that’s what we’re being taught.

Instead, if we were just brave enough, if we were just quiet enough, if we were just humble enough, if we were just willing to see each other as we really are, we would see that we’re none of those things. We’re humans. We’re moms. We’re dads. We’re brothers. We’re sisters. We’re sons and daughters. We’re all alike. All men are created equal, and so we have the same basic hopes and dreams.

We’re not living in a Henry Ford world where everybody wants the same thing. Henry Ford, you could have whatever car you wanted as long as it was black. It took Chevy to come by and say I think people want more variety than that. There’s a lot of stuff we’re never going to agree on. We’re always going to vote differently. We’re always going to have different policies and politics. We’re always going to like different styles, different hamburgers. We’re all going to be different, always. It’s the way we’re supposed to be, but there’s a few things that we have in common.

I don’t know how to teach this. We all in the end want the same thing. We all want to belong to something bigger than ourselves, something good, something great. Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “I want to be mediocre for the rest of my life.” None of us as kids said, “I want to be a zero. I want to be somebody that nobody notices.” All of us want to be noticed. All of us want to do something great. All of us want to have true love.

How many people are in dead-end marriages? I don’t care what their color is. How many people are in dead-end marriages or in dead-end relationships where you’re just like, “This isn’t it, man,” but you’re afraid. You’re in that relationship. You’re not going to get out of that relationship because you’re afraid that that’s as good as it’s going to get. That’s a lie.

We all want control of our own life. We don’t want to be manipulated. We just want some control. We want to know that justice is real. We’re willing to take the hard knocks. We know that justice isn’t served all the time. We don’t always get what we want. We don’t always get what we deserve, but in the end, the good guys win.

We all want peace. We all want our kids to work together and to play together. What am I telling you? I’m telling you Martin Luther King’s dream. Martin Luther King wouldn’t have been effective if what he wanted, what he articulated on those steps that I was not allowed to stand on—I wouldn’t have done it anyway, but I was told by the government I can’t stand on those steps to deliver my message when I was in Washington. A month later, a black man, Van Jones, stood on those steps and delivered a message of politics.

When he stood on those steps, he articulated something that touched the heart of all of us, anybody with an open heart, something we all wanted. It’s this. Think about this message, not in today’s world, in the 1960s. Think of this—I am a man. What is that? What I just told you, we’re all the same. We want to be seen. We want to be heard. We want a fair shake.

He didn’t say I want stuff; I want equal stuff in my house that that guy has. That’s not what the message was. It was give me a chance. Let me prove myself. I might be the most naïve man alive. I believe this. I believe the only thing that is stopping us is our faith in one another. All we see is the cartoon of the other person.

I don’t know how many people are watching this or will see this clip and will say, “Listen to Glenn Beck. Who the hell does he think he is?” Nobody…nobody…probably the worst messenger that could bring this to you. I know that. A lot of people hate me. A lot of people think that I’m a racist. I got it. I got it. I guess some of it is deserved if we live in a world where you think out loud, and that is wrong, where you question authority. That’s wrong, but none of it was intentional. But it doesn’t matter.

I don’t care who you are, I think we’re a lot alike. I’m a guy that is a dad who is just trying to figure out what’s happening to our society. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m sorry, I don’t believe what the president said over the holidays that race relations are getting better. They’re not. They’re not. I know people who have never said anything ever about race relations ever, have never had a problem, who are now starting to say, “What the hell is going on in Ferguson? People are just trying to steal stuff.” They’re becoming the cartoon people. That’s got to stop.

We’ve made progress. It’s disintegrating in front of our eyes, and no matter what happens, it will disintegrate if we don’t stand, if we don’t say no, no, no, no, not going down, I’m not going to have that earth crumble beneath my feet. I won’t. We’ve never been perfect. Since the beginning of time, nobody’s ever been perfect. It’s never happened. Read your history. People have been enslaving people, whipping people, treating people like garbage forever. I got it. We’re never going to get past that. Why? It’s not a black thing or a white thing or a yellow thing or a brown thing or a red thing. It’s a human thing. Humans stink on ice. God is great.

Is there anybody else that looks around the world and says, “Where is Martin Luther King today? Where is Winston Churchill today?” Anybody else besides me say that? Because I don’t see them. I’ve looked. I’ve spent ten years. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had on my show—maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s you. Can I help you? How can I hold your arms up? Here, let me help you. Can I help you? Let me expose you. Please, maybe it’s you.

Maybe it’s you. Can I help you? Can I hold your arms up? Maybe it’s your children. My kids don’t have school today. Today is the day I want them to have school. I told my kids when I left this morning, I want you to tell me who Martin Luther King is when I come home. Tell me who he is. He was a real. The problems in this country were horrible. They’re not that way now. Are they perfect? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Are they getting better? No.

I saw the play South Pacific on Broadway a few years ago. I had never seen it. My mother used to always sing it, and I used to hate it. Oh my gosh, that’s a powerful play. It’s all about racism. There’s a song in it that says you have to be carefully taught. To hate like that, you have to be carefully taught. Don’t you see in all of society we are being carefully taught?

Whether it’s the Al Sharptons, Jesse Jackson, the Klansmen, the anarchists, whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s on all sides. All sides are doing it. We’re being carefully taught. Can we look past it?

Again, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so I have no place to talk here, and then again, I think I’m the perfect guy to tell you, because I didn’t grow up with all of this crap, and that’s all it is, it’s crap. It’s all crap that we keep inside, and it’s rotting us from the inside. I’m blessed that I didn’t grow up with all of this crap. I’m happy, but I look at my country and I look at my fellow countrymen and I’m like, “What is wrong with you people?”

Oh my gosh, they’re black. Oh my gosh, they’re white. Get over it. We just don’t speak the same language, that’s it. We all speak English, but not quite. I happen to believe for millions of Americans, especially those under 30, the Martin Luther King dream has been realized. For the most part, it has been realized. We work together. We play together. We marry each other. We love each other.

Martin Luther King talked about all of this as a mountain, a mountain to climb. Why? Because it’s hard work. Man, I posted something last night on Facebook that, I mean, I saw the haters come out—Oh my gosh, look at Glenn Beck, such a poser. Whatever, shut up. You don’t know me.

There’s a dear, sweet woman in my life who has adopted me as her son, and I have adopted her as my mom, but it started out with her hating my guts. I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. She didn’t watch. She didn’t listen. She only read what was written about me, and she hated me. She’s black. She thought I was a racist, and when God told her to pray for me, she did not want to.

She told me later, she said to God, “No, not him.” About a year later, she went to Dallas Cowboy Stadium for Restoring Love, and she said she cracked open, and she saw me for the first time. Several months later, it was on a Sunday night, she came to my house. I didn’t know this whole story. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know that she had spent years hating my guts, but she came to apologize to me, a woman of profound integrity.

Her name is Falma. She was at my house last night with a group of friends. What the headlines are saying today is Glenn Beck had a Martin Luther King celebration at his house. No, I didn’t. I had friends over at my house who happen to be gospel singers, and they come over, and they sing, and we pray together, and we have food together, and it’s great.

But last night, we were sitting there having barbecue in my kitchen. There are about 25 of us, and we started talking about the civil rights movement. They had just seen Selma, and Falma had lived through it. She remembered what it was like to be a young black girl in the 1960s in the South. Watch.

VIDEO

Falma: During the 60s, and Martin Luther King was talking about his peaceful marches and his protesters. In school, we all wanted to do it. You know, we loved him. You know, we loved him back then. We loved him back then more than the people love him now, but it was exciting just to know that this man wants to change things. We didn’t know the logistics. We didn’t know it was about voting. We didn’t know what it was about. We just knew we liked him.

All of the South was full of racism, and when I was growing up as a little girl, we had gotten accustomed to the white-only fountain, the white-only entrances. You know, when you’re growing up, you don’t notice things. There’s a system in place, so to speak, and what I did notice was that my mother took us downtown to take pictures one day. I was like maybe nine or ten, and she took us to take pictures.

Well, we had to get on the trolley, and we actually had to wait for the guy to get off the trolley, turn it around so that we would be seated in the back.

Well, actually, we lived in a neighborhood, and next door to our house was a bakery, a very small bakery, and we would go there and buy bread and stuff. You could buy it real cheap, $0.25. My sisters were on the back porch. It was a screened-in porch. The owner had employed a black man, and when he employed this black man, I came home, and they said, “Oh, it’s going to happen again. He’s going to do it again.”

And I’m looking at them, and I’m going, “Do what? What is he going to do?” And they’re saying, “He’s going to do it again. Let’s go see.” So, they had seen it before. The black man had done whatever he had done wrong, and this man, the owner, pulled off his belt, and he actually beat him.

We’re standing there looking at it, and I’ll never forget the look on that man’s…the black man’s face. It was shame, because we saw it. It probably wouldn’t have affected me if I hadn’t seen his eyes, because it was total shame.

Why the Declaration of Independence still matters — Part 2: The Declaration's structure and purpose

From the moment the 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson arrived at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1776, he was on the radical side. That caused John Adams to like him immediately. Then the Congress stuck Jefferson and Adams together on the five-man committee to write a formal statement justifying a break with Great Britain, and their mutual admiration society began.

Jefferson thought Adams should write the Declaration. But Adams protested, saying, “It can't come from me because I'm obnoxious and disliked." Adams reasoned that Jefferson was not obnoxious or disliked, therefore he should write it. Plus, he flattered Jefferson, by telling him he was a great writer. It was a master class in passing the buck.

So, over the next 17 days, Jefferson holed up in his room, applying his lawyer skills to the ideas of the Enlightenment. He borrowed freely from existing documents like the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He later wrote that “he was not striving for originality of principle or sentiment." Instead, he hoped his words served as “an expression of the American mind."

It's safe to say he achieved his goal.

The five-man committee changed about 25 percent of Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration before submitting it to Congress. Then, Congress altered about one-fifth of that draft. But most of the final Declaration's words are Jefferson's, including the most famous passage — the Preamble — which Congress left intact. The result is nothing less than America's mission statement, the words that ultimately bind the nation together. And words that we desperately need to rediscover because of our boiling partisan rage.

The Declaration is brilliant in structure and purpose. It was designed for multiple audiences: the King of Great Britain, the colonists, and the world. And it was designed for multiple purposes: rallying the troops, gaining foreign allies, and announcing the creation of a new country.

The Declaration is structured in five sections: the Introduction, Preamble, the Body composed of two parts, and the Conclusion. It's basically the most genius breakup letter ever written.

In the Introduction, step 1 is the notification — I think we need to break up. And to be fair, I feel I owe you an explanation...

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…

The Continental Congress felt they were entitled by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" to “dissolve the political bands," but they needed to prove the legitimacy of their cause. They were defying the world's most powerful nation and needed to motivate foreign allies to join the effort. So, they set their struggle within the entire “Course of human events." They're saying, this is no petty political spat — this is a major event in world history.

Step 2 is declaring what you believe in, your standards — Here's what I'm looking for in a healthy relationship...

This is the most famous part of the Declaration; the part school children recite — the Preamble:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That's as much as many Americans know of the Declaration. But the Preamble is the DNA of our nation, and it really needs to be taken as a whole:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Preamble takes us through a logical progression: All men are created equal; God gives all humans certain inherent rights that cannot be denied; these include the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; to protect those rights, we have governments set up; but when a government fails to protect our inherent rights, people have the right to change or replace it.

Government is only there to protect the rights of mankind. They don't have any power unless we give it to them. That was an extraordinarily radical concept then and we're drifting away from it now.

The Preamble is the justification for revolution. But note how they don't mention Great Britain yet. And again, note how they frame it within a universal context. These are fundamental principles, not just squabbling between neighbors. These are the principles that make the Declaration just as relevant today. It's not just a dusty parchment that applied in 1776.

Step 3 is laying out your case — Here's why things didn't work out between us. It's not me, it's you...

This is Part 1 of the Body of the Declaration. It's the section where Jefferson gets to flex his lawyer muscles by listing 27 grievances against the British crown. This is the specific proof of their right to rebellion:

He has obstructed the administration of justice...

For imposing taxes on us without our consent...

For suspending our own legislatures...

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us...

Again, Congress presented these “causes which impel them to separation" in universal terms to appeal to an international audience. It's like they were saying, by joining our fight you'll be joining mankind's overall fight against tyranny.

Step 4 is demonstrating the actions you took — I really tried to make this relationship work, and here's how...

This is Part 2 of the Body. It explains how the colonists attempted to plead their case directly to the British people, only to have the door slammed in their face:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury...

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice... We must, therefore... hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

This basically wrapped up America's argument for independence — we haven't been treated justly, we tried to talk to you about it, but since you refuse to listen and things are only getting worse, we're done here.

Step 5 is stating your intent — So, I think it's best if we go our separate ways. And my decision is final...

This is the powerful Conclusion. If people know any part of the Declaration besides the Preamble, this is it:

...that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved...

They left no room for doubt. The relationship was over, and America was going to reboot, on its own, with all the rights of an independent nation.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The message was clear — this was no pitchfork mob. These were serious men who had carefully thought through the issues before taking action. They were putting everything on the line for this cause.

The Declaration of Independence is a landmark in the history of democracy because it was the first formal statement of a people announcing their right to choose their own government. That seems so obvious to us now, but in 1776 it was radical and unprecedented.

In 1825, Jefferson wrote that the purpose of the Declaration was “not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of… but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm… to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."

You're not going to do better than the Declaration of Independence. Sure, it worked as a means of breaking away from Great Britain, but its genius is that its principles of equality, inherent rights, and self-government work for all time — as long as we actually know and pursue those principles.

Why the Declaration of Independence still matters — Part 1: The Declaration and slavery

Patrick Perkins / Unsplash

On June 7, 1776, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House, better known today as Independence Hall. Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies' independence. The “Lee Resolution" was short and sweet:

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Intense debate followed, and the Congress voted 7 to 5 (with New York abstaining) to postpone a vote on Lee's Resolution. They called a recess for three weeks. In the meantime, the delegates felt they needed to explain what they were doing in writing. So, before the recess, they appointed a five-man committee to come up with a formal statement justifying a break with Great Britain. They appointed two men from New England — Roger Sherman and John Adams; two from the middle colonies — Robert Livingston and Benjamin Franklin; and one Southerner — Thomas Jefferson. The responsibility for writing what would become the Declaration of Independence fell to Jefferson.

In the rotunda of the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., there are three original documents on permanent display: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. These are the three pillars of the United States, yet America barely seems to know them anymore. We need to get reacquainted — quickly.

In a letter to his friend John Adams in 1816, Jefferson wrote: “I like the dreams of the future, better than the history of the past."

America used to be a forward-looking nation of dreamers. We still are in spots, but the national attitude that we hear broadcast loudest across media is not looking toward the future with optimism and hope. In late 2017, a national poll found 59% of Americans think we are currently at the “lowest point in our nation's history that they can remember."

America spends far too much time looking to the past for blame and excuse. And let's be honest, even the Right is often more concerned with “owning the left" than helping point anyone toward the practical principles of the Declaration of Independence. America has clearly lost touch with who we are as a nation. We have a national identity crisis.

The Declaration of Independence is America's thesis statement, and without it America doesn't exist.

It is urgent that we get reacquainted with the Declaration of Independence because postmodernism would have us believe that we've evolved beyond the America of our founding documents, and thus they're irrelevant to the present and the future. But the Declaration of Independence is America's thesis statement, and without it America doesn't exist.

Today, much of the nation is so addicted to partisan indignation that "day-to-day" indignation isn't enough to feed the addiction. So, we're reaching into America's past to help us get our fix. In 2016, Democrats in the Louisiana state legislature tabled a bill that would have required fourth through sixth graders to recite the opening lines of the Declaration. They didn't table it because they thought it would be too difficult or too patriotic. They tabled it because the requirement would include the phrase “all men are created equal" and the progressives in the Louisiana legislature didn't want the children to have to recite a lie. Representative Barbara Norton said, “One thing that I do know is, all men are not created equal. When I think back in 1776, July the fourth, African Americans were slaves. And for you to bring a bill to request that our children will recite the Declaration, I think it's a little bit unfair to us. To ask our children to recite something that's not the truth. And for you to ask those children to repeat the Declaration stating that all men's are free. I think that's unfair."

Remarkable — an elected representative saying it wouldn't be fair for students to have to recite the Declaration because “all men are not created equal." Another Louisiana Democrat explained that the government born out of the Declaration “was used against races of people." I guess they missed that part in school where they might have learned that the same government later made slavery illegal and amended the Constitution to guarantee all men equal protection under the law. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were an admission of guilt by the nation regarding slavery, and an effort to right the wrongs.

Yet, the progressive logic goes something like this: many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, including Thomas Jefferson who wrote it, owned slaves; slavery is evil; therefore, the Declaration of Independence is not valid because it was created by evil slave owners.

It's a sad reality that the left has a very hard time appreciating the universal merits of the Declaration of Independence because they're so hung up on the long-dead issue of slavery. And just to be clear — because people love to take things out of context — of course slavery was horrible. Yes, it is a total stain on our history. But defending the Declaration of Independence is not an effort to excuse any aspect of slavery.

Okay then, people might say, how could the Founders approve the phrase “All men are created equal," when many of them owned slaves? How did they miss that?

They didn't miss it. In fact, Thomas Jefferson included an anti-slavery passage in his first draft of the Declaration. The paragraph blasted King George for condoning slavery and preventing the American Colonies from passing legislation to ban slavery:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights to life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere... Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

We don't say “execrable" that much anymore. It means, utterly detestable, abominable, abhorrent — basically very bad.

Jefferson was upset when Georgia and North Carolina threw up the biggest resistance to that paragraph. Ultimately, those two states twisted Congress' arm to delete the paragraph.

Still, how could a man calling the slave trade “execrable" be a slaveowner himself? No doubt about it, Jefferson was a flawed human being. He even had slaves from his estate in Virginia attending him while he was in Philadelphia, in the very apartment where he was writing the Declaration.

Many of the Southern Founders deeply believed in the principles of the Declaration yet couldn't bring themselves to upend the basis of their livelihood. By 1806, Virginia law made it more difficult for slave owners to free their slaves, especially if the owner had significant debts as Jefferson did.

At the same time, the Founders were not idiots. They understood the ramifications of signing on to the principles described so eloquently in the Declaration. They understood that logically, slavery would eventually have to be abolished in America because it was unjust, and the words they were committing to paper said as much. Remember, John Adams was on the committee of five that worked on the Declaration and he later said that the Revolution would never be complete until the slaves were free.

Also, the same generation that signed the Declaration started the process of abolition by banning the importation of slaves in 1807. Jefferson was President at the time and he urged Congress to pass the law.

America has an obvious road map that, as a nation, we're not consulting often enough.

The Declaration took a major step toward crippling the institution of slavery. It made the argument for the first time about the fundamental rights of all humans which completely undermined slavery. Planting the seeds to end slavery is not nearly commendable enough for leftist critics, but you can't discount the fact that the seeds were planted. It's like they started an expiration clock for slavery by approving the Declaration. Everything that happened almost a century later to end slavery, and then a century after that with the Civil Rights movement, flowed from the principles voiced in the Declaration.

Ironically for a movement that calls itself progressive, it is obsessed with retrying and judging the past over and over. Progressives consider this a better use of time than actually putting past abuses in the rearview and striving not to be defined by ancestral failures.

It can be very constructive to look to the past, but not when it's used to flog each other in the present. Examining history is useful in providing a road map for the future. And America has an obvious road map that, as a nation, we're not consulting often enough. But it's right there, the original, under glass. The ink is fading, but the words won't die — as long as we continue to discuss them.

'Good Morning Texas' gives exclusive preview of Mercury One museum

Screen shot from Good Morning Texas

Mercury One is holding a special exhibition over the 4th of July weekend, using hundreds of artifacts, documents and augmented reality experiences to showcase the history of slavery — including slavery today — and a path forward. Good Morning Texas reporter Paige McCoy Smith went through the exhibit for an exclusive preview with Mercury One's chief operating officer Michael Little on Tuesday.

Watch the video below to see the full preview.

Click here to purchase tickets to the museum (running from July 4 - 7).

Antifascist mob goes FULL fascist in Portland

Over the weekend, journalist Andy Ngo and several other apparent right-leaning people were brutally beaten by masked-gangs of Antifa protesters in Portland, Oregon. Short for "antifascist," Antifa claims to be fighting for social justice and tolerance — by forcibly and violently silencing anyone with opposing opinions. Ngo, who was kicked, punched, and sprayed with an unknown substance, is currently still in the hospital with a "brain bleed" as a result of the savage attack. Watch the video to get the details from Glenn.

Glenn's Show Prep