The seven mountains of culture - Glenn says 'if we lose these two, we're done'

September 24, 2015

WRITER

On radio Thursday, Glenn was joined by David Barton and George Barna - a pollster and researcher on American culture. Glenn started by introducing seven cultural elements, which are required if you want to destroy or build a culture.

The Seven Mountains of Culture:

1. Business

2. Government

3. Media

4. Arts and Entertainment

5. Education

6. Family

7. Religion

Glenn said we've already lost all the mountains except for two - family and religion - but they too are clearly under attack.

"If we lose these two, we're done," Glenn said.

Then they discussed what can be done to preserve our culture by defending the principles our nation was founded upon. According to Barna's research, it starts with encouraging America's pastors to become better leaders by preaching about the important issues affecting American society today.

Listen or read the transcript below for more.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

GLENN: I want to give you the seven mountains of culture. Business, government, media, arts, and entertainment, education, family, and religion. Those are seven mountains of culture. And if you want to destroy or build a culture, you have to have those seven mountains. We have lost the mountain of business. They don't even teach ethics anymore. We're not teaching moral sentiments anymore. We're just teaching raw capitalism. The best business schools in the country, when the professor stands up and says, "Okay, so here's your case study, was that good or bad, was that right or wrong? The hands go up and say, did it make money?" And so we've lost business.

We've lost government. The media, I don't know if we've ever had. Arts and entertainment, we've never had. Education is gone to us. The last two mountains of culture -- and if we lose these two, we're done. The family. It is absolutely under attack. And the last one is religion. And religion, I think at this point, is neutral. It could go either way. The same thing with the family. But it is certainly not a positive impact. And I will get into that here, just a bit with this amazing pollster and researcher on the culture, George Barna. And he's with the Barna Group. And he's a Christian polling firm that goes out and looks for what is affecting the culture. What is actually happening?

David Barton is joining us, because this actually started with a conversation we had, how long ago, David Barton?

DAVID: Oh, it's probably been about almost two months ago, Glenn.

GLENN: Okay. So we started having a conversation -- why don't you tell the story how we got here.

DAVID: Yeah, we were having a conversation, and you said, "We need to get people to get their pastors to preach about stuff. What do we ask them to preach about?" And I looked at you and said, "I don't have a clue, but I think I know someone who does." So I called George that night and said, "George, here's the deal. Glenn would like to have people ask their pastors to preach about certain things. What do people want to hear? What do they want to --

GLENN: Looking for leaders.

DAVID: Looking for leaders.

GLENN: In our pulpits.

DAVID: Yep.

GLENN: Because I contend they're not shepherds, they're sheep. They're afraid. Some of them don't know what to lead on. Most of them also don't know how to be active.

DAVID: Well, there's a difference between being a pastor and being a leader. There's a lot of pastors; there's just not a lot of leaders. And a lot of leaders -- one of the things I challenge pastors with now is, hey, if you announce on Sunday morning or Saturday morning, or whatever your service is, you announce you're shutting down your church, on Monday morning, will civic officials be lined up at your church saying, "No, don't leave. You're too valuable to the community. We can't have you leave. You offer too much good stuff." And most churches community would never know.

GLENN: What was the church I went to in Houston, Pat, for that funeral. What was the name of that?

PAT: Second Baptist.

GLENN: That church, because I talked to the city officials, they've said, "They've changed our community. They've changed our community."

DAVID: That's right.

GLENN: That church, if they close down, that church would have city officials --

DAVID: They would have city officials banging on the stage because there's too much value added. And that's leaders. Those aren't pastors. Now, he's a pastor, but he's a leader. And he's changed his community around him. Too many places of worship do not change their community.

GLENN: So, George, how did you put this polling together? How did you go out and conduct this? When you hear what the results of this poll are, it will blow you away.

GEORGE: Well, the first thing we did, Glenn, was we wanted to do some qualitative research, which means, rather than telling the people, these are the issues you can choose from, we simply asked them, "What are the things that are on your mind, on your heart? What do you want to hear about? Just give us a laundry list of whatever comes into your mind."

So we did that with 150 people across the country, and then we put together this exhaustive list and looked at I think it was 150 different issues that got mentioned. Then we took the ones that were toward the upper half of the list and said, okay, let's go out toward a larger more representative sample of people. Give them the list and ask them on a scale, which ones do you absolutely have to hear. So what we're going to be talking about are the ones where people said it was extremely critical or very critical.

GLENN: "Critical" was the word?

GEORGE: "Critical" was the word, where they said, "I need to know what -- not what my pastor thinks about this, but what does the Bible teach about this?"

GLENN: Okay. I want to start at number 13.

Number 13, the media influence on public, content responsibility, truth, moral standards, choices for exposure, and resistance.

DAVID: This is what they're asking their pastor to talk about.

GLENN: Right.

DAVID: This is unbelievable. I don't think a pastor has ever been asked to talk about media, but people are begging for that.

GLENN: And the media itself would dismiss any pastor talking about the media.

DAVID: That's right.

GLENN: Now, 70 percent of the sample said that is critical to talk about this.

GEORGE: Extremely or very critical for them to know about that. Now, I have to say, the sample that we talked to, these were conservative individuals who are religious. The vast majority of them are Christians.

GLENN: Yeah, I mean, we're asking churchgoers. Yeah, we're asking church people, what is it -- what do you want to have your pastor talk about?

Number 12, no pastor in America would say this is even in the top 20. Islam. The core beliefs, response to Islamic aggression, threat to peace and domestic stability.

GEORGE: Here you have a group of people coming to church week after week, they're not sure they know what their own faith is about. And then in the news, they're reading all kinds of conflicting reports about Muslims and Islam and Iraq and Iran. They don't even know where these places are on the map. And so there's all these kinds of issues that are swirling around in their head. They're crying out for somebody to help them make sense out of this, and not just from a news perspective, but from a biblical perspective because they want to serve God well. They're begging leaders to lead them in this arena.

DAVID: Three out of four want to hear that. Three out of four.

GLENN: Number 11, church in politics and the church in government, separation of church and state, legal boundaries, church resistance to government. 73 percent say that's critical that it is preached from the pulpit.

GEORGE: And once again, to them, they're coming into this whole arena completely confused. Because they're being told all the time, no, we shouldn't talk about these things in public. In a church, are you kidding me? Why would you do that, talk about politics and government? They think there's nothing in the scriptures about this. They think there's no reason to even bring this up. But they're saying, God must have a position.

GLENN: Number ten is self-governance, biblical support, personal conduct, impact on freedom, and national sovereignty. Maybe I've heard one church talk about this, you know. That David Barton wasn't speaking at. Where I've heard them actually get up and on a Sunday start teaching about our -- our self-governance and what it means for the -- the governance of the people of the United States.

DAVID: You know, if you want to be a hero, just get in front of the bandwagon, like you're the band director. Three out of four want to hear this stuff, just be a hero, start talking about what they want to hear about. I mean, this should be a no-brainer. In a self-governing country, you can't be a self-governing country without self-governing citizens, and we won't talk about that?

GLENN: Number nine is bioethics, cloning, euthanasia, genetic engineering, cryogenics, organ donation, and surrogacy, 76 percent.

Then eight, role in government, the biblical view, the church/state relationship, our personal responsibility and limitations. What's the difference between eight and ten, self-governance?

GEORGE: Essentially, people don't know the difference. They just know that there's so much wrapped around these issues that they want them covered in full.

GLENN: Because there's three of them. There's church in politics, self-governance, and the role of government.

GEORGE: Yeah. And when you look at something like self-governance, remember the kind of culture we live in where people are basically saying, "Don't tell me what to do." Here's a group of people saying, "Please tell me how I should behave."

GLENN: Don't you think this kind of goes to our kids. People say, "Don't -- let your kids be free." No, kids want boundaries.

GEORGE: And structure.

GLENN: And I think we as a people know we need structure. We need universal structure. We don't want to be told what to do or treated like children, but we do want to know, there are some eternal answers here. Why are we just making this up, and why isn't anyone teaching us this?

DAVID: We're into kids and sports. Tell me any sports that kids are involved with that doesn't have boundaries and that we don't teach them boundaries from the very start. Why don't we do that with the rest of life?

GLENN: Correct. Number seven is Christian heritage and the role of Christian faith and American history, the church role in the US development, and the modern day relevancy. This is you, David.

DAVID: And I get my brains beat in by people saying, "You can't talk about that in church." 79 percent of Americans want to hear this in church. And I'm seen as an extremist for doing this kind of stuff.

GLENN: Right. Now, let me go to the top six, because I think these are stunning. There's not a preacher in the country -- would you agree with that? You poll these people all the time. How stunning is the top six.

GEORGE: I had to go back and rerun the data to make sure that I didn't get something wrong in the program that ran the data because it was not what I expected.

GLENN: Here's number six. 81 percent -- sorry, 80 percent are saying that it is extremely critical or critical that their pastor, priest, or rabbi speaks about Israel, its role in the world, the Christian responsibility to Israel, US foreign policy toward Israel and its enemies.

You guys were on TV last night and I said, "I knew we're doomed as a country when I stood in front of the capitol building and there were maybe 3,000 people there, 4,000 people there, and there should have been --

DAVID: And that was the Iran rally.

GLENN: Yeah, that was the Iran rally. There should have been maybe 10,000 pastors there alone.

DAVID: Yeah.

GLENN: Where were the churches? Where were they? The answer, they don't know.

DAVID: Right.

GLENN: The people, they have no idea.

DAVID: But people want to know.

GLENN: Correct.

DAVID: And, by the way, it's worth pointing out on this, also in the poll, he found out that 33 percent of pastors said they talked about Israel, but only 24 percent of people said they heard their pastor talk about Israel.

GLENN: So what does that tell you, David?

DAVID: It tells me that the guys who think they're talking about it, don't talk about it very much. Or they made a comment in passing or they thought they made an illusion that somebody understood. 80 percent of people want to hear this. Pastors, 33 percent said, "Well, I talk about this." But only 24 percent actually heard them say something. Which means they're not communicating what they think they are from the pulpit to the people in the pews.

Would anyone be surprised if aliens have entered our solar system?

David McNew/Newsmakers

The great beyond. What does it hide from us? Do unknown lifeforms linger in the dark? In other words, was David Bowie right? Is there life on Mars? The head of Harvard University's Astronomy Department contends that, yes, there is. Well, not that there's life on Mars. I'll explain in just a minute.

In an academic article for the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Dr. Avi Loeb, the head of Harvard University's Astronomy Department, claimed that an alien probe entered our solar system. He claimed that it is masked as the space rock Oumuamua (Ow-moo-ah-moo-ah), "the first interstellar object to enter our solar system." It turns out that "space rock" is way more than a musical genre.

In his own words:

Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that 'Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment.

His evidence? pointed to the space rock's abnormal acceleration, activity which he gathered via the Hubble Space Telescope.

He added that "the lightsail technology might be abundantly used for transportation of cargo between planets."

Sounds a bit like Star Wars, no? Or are you more of a Star Trek fan? Either way, it's an odd thing to hear from the head of Harvard University's Astronomy Department. Typically, we hear these sorts of things from the darker corners of the History Channel.

Well, I'll say that, at this point, I'm not really surprised. It's 2019. I'm not surprised by anything anymore.

"I don't care what people say," Loeb said. "It doesn't matter to me. I say what I think, and if the broad public takes an interest in what I say, that's a welcome result as far as I'm concerned, but an indirect result. Science isn't like politics: It is not based on popularity polls."

Honestly, I believe the guy. Well, I'll say that, at this point, I'm not really surprised. It's 2019. I'm not surprised by anything anymore. Heck, I welcome alien lifeforms. Maybe they can give us some advice on how to get our world together.

'Women's March' leader refuses to back down from support of anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan

Marcus Ingram/Getty Images for BET

The third annual Women's March is approaching, and the movement has shown signs of strife. It's imploding, really. An article in Tablet Magazine revealed deep-seated antisemitism among the co-chairs of the movement, which is funny for a movement that brands itself as a haven of "intersectionality." The examples pile up, and just yesterday there was another. I'll tell you about it in a minute.

The Women's March has been imploding, and it started at the very top. Four women have come to represent the diverse face of the movement, the co-chairs: Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Linda Sarsour, and Bob Bland.

Increasingly, we've learned that anti-Semitism is common among these women.

Teresa Shook, who founded the Women's March has repeatedly asked them to step down: The co-chairs "have steered the Movement away from its true course. I have waited, hoping they would right the ship," Shook wrote. "But they have not. In opposition to our Unity Principles, they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs."

Tamika Mallory gave us the latest example, by continuing to stand by Louis Farrakhan. Check out Tamika's arrogant, nonsensical response. But the real problem came at the end of Mallory's rambling non-answer.

Women's March Leader Tamika Mallory Doubles Down On Love For Louis Farrakhan youtu.be

Later this week I'll go over the entire controversy on Glenn TV. It's harrowing, really. For now, I'll leave you with this. Critics of 4th wave feminism have argued that the radical identity politics of the left will lead to the exact kind of mistreatment that feminists claim to be against. That argument has been written off as using the slippery slope fallacy. But, as we see with the Women's March, it is in fact a brutal reality.

Congressional Dems celebrate the government shutdown by hitting the beach

Jasper Boer/Unsplash

Remember how serious Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi were last week, when they gave their "rebuttal" to President Trump's address? They made it seem like this government shutdown is apocalyptic. A lot of Democrats have done the same. On social media and CNN at least. Thirty Democrats, however, took a different route. Puerto Rico. For cocktails at the beach.

A group of 30 Democrats have turned the government shutdown into a live-action interpretation of a Jimmy Buffet song:

Nibblin' on sponge cake, Watchin' the sun bake.

No, seriously. In the words of Press Secretary Sarah Sanders:

Democrats in Congress are so alarmed about federal workers not getting paid they're partying on the beach instead of negotiating a compromise to reopen the government and secure the border.

A photo of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez at a resort beach has gone viral.

They arrived via chartered jet. They're staying at a seaside resort, and attended the ridiculously-priced and overhyped play "Hamilton," where tickets for opening night "ranged from $10 to $5,000," according to the Associated Press. They even attended several afterparties.

Of course, the official occasion seems legit. They're in San Juan for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus BOLD PAC. According to a memo for the gathering:

This year's winter retreat promises to be our most widely attended yet with over 220 guests, including 39 Members of Congress and CHC BOLD PAC supporters expected to attend and participate!

Also in attendance, about 109 lobbyists, from a number of places, including "R.J. Reynolds, Facebook, Comcast, Amazon, PhRMA, Microsoft, Intel, Verizon, and unions like the National Education Association."

Donald Jr. said it well:

And of course no one says anything. I'm not even in government and I'd get killed in the press if I was on vacation right now. Why won't they cover their democrat buddies lobbyist sponsored vacation in the islands???

Maduro takes office and Venezuelans vote with their feet

CRIS BOURONCLE/AFP/Getty Images

Venezuela continues to collapse. A country that used to have the world's largest oil reserves is now in rags. Its money is worthless, with inflation near one million percent. People must work an average of five days at minimum wage just to afford a dozen eggs. But there is one person still pumped about Venezuela's future – its noble president, Nicolas Maduro! I'll tell you why he's still enthusiastic in just a minute…

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro had a stellar 2018. Here are some highlights:

Running water and electricity only work occasionally and prices for basic goods doubled.
Doctors, engineers, oil workers, and electricians fled the country en masse. Over 48,000 teachers also left the country.
Over half a million Venezuelans fled to Peru alone.

Maduro created a new digital currency called the "petro." One petro is supposed to equal the price of a barrel of oil, about $60. U.S. Treasury Department officials call the petro a scam. Who could've seen that coming?

Maduro also announced a 3,000 percent minimum-wage hike. Even Ocasio-Cortez might roll her eyes at that one. Or find it inspiring.

And just yesterday, a Human Rights Watch report detailed how Venezuelan intelligence and security forces are arresting and torturing military personnel and their family members who are accused of plotting against Maduro. The torture includes: "brutal beatings, asphyxiation, cutting soles of their feet with a razor blade, electric shocks, food deprivation, [and] forbidding them to go to the bathroom."

It's so bad in Venezuela that even The Washington Post admits Venezuela's problems are mostly due to "failed socialist policies." But President Nicolas Maduro gave a televised New Year's address calling 2019, "the year of new beginnings." He's pumped, you see, because today he will be sworn in for his second six-year term as president. He was "re-elected" last May in an election that the international community declared illegitimate.

Thirteen nations released a statement last week urging Maduro not to take office and saying they would not recognize his presidency.

Maduro doesn't have many friends left at home or abroad. Thirteen nations released a statement last week urging Maduro not to take office and saying they would not recognize his presidency. This week, the U.S. added more Venezuelan officials to its sanctions list.

In a press conference yesterday, Maduro said:

There's a coup against me, led by Washington. I tell our civilians and our military to be ready. Our people will respond.

I think the people of Venezuela who have the means are already responding – by leaving.

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