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CHALKBOARD LESSON: 6 Eternal Truths of Self-Governance

December 08, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

Progressives want you to believe the Declaration of Independence is a worthless document. Why? Because it is the foundation upon which our house is built, and it's a house of freedom, equality and personal responsibility --- not government control.

"The Declaration of Independence tells you six things in the two opening paragraphs that are eternal. It tells you there is a higher law than man's law. There is the law of nature. Does it happen in nature? And if it happens in nature, that's good. Then we know that's a natural right," Glenn explained Thursday on radio.

He went on to detail the other truths established in the Declaration that ensure our rights as American citizens:

1. There is a higher law

2. All men are equal and have rights

3. Our rights come from the creator

4. Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights

5. Government gets all of its power from the consent of the governed (the people)

6. When a government becomes destructive to those ends (protection of our God-given rights) we have the right to abolish or change it, and to institute a new government that will make us happy and secure in our rights.

The Declaration of Independence is what we believe. Combined with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, these three powerhouse documents have the ability to restrict the government and restore our Republic.

Enjoy this complimentary clip from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

The Declaration of Independence tells you six things in the two opening paragraphs that are eternal. It tells you: There is a higher law than man's law. There is the law of nature. Does it happen in nature?

And if it happens in nature, that's good. Then we know that's a natural right.

Now, does God come up above that and say because we're not an animal, we don't have a right to go kill other people for our food?

Yes. He says thousand shall not murder. He tells us what to eat. There's another law that usurps what happens in the animal kingdom.

And those two -- those two are your framework for all rights. It says, "All men are created equal and have rights." These rights come from the higher law. Nature and nature's God.

And the rights are not from any man. They're inalienable. So they come from God, which means no one can change them. Because I hate to break it to Al Gore: You can't change nature.

Rights are from the creator. Four, the government is only instituted -- what's its job? Well, it's got to build roads. It's got -- no, it doesn't. Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights.

PAT: Oh, and -- and to make airports nicer.

GLENN: Yeah, no.

PAT: You want to make them really shiny. You want to have a mall.

GLENN: Governments, their main job -- their main job is to preserve the rights that you find in nature and nature's God.

Then the government gets all of its power. It has no rights. It has all of its power from the consent of the governed.

So who is the government serving? The people who are giving it power.

And it has to listen to the consent of the governed.

Well, I contend the Supreme Court isn't doing that. I contend the G.O.P. isn't doing that. The Democrats aren't doing that. Bush didn't do that. Obama is not doing that.

That when a government becomes -- let me get the exact words. When it becomes destructive to those ends -- which ends? To protect your right, which comes from God and nature. Then you have the right to abolish or change it.

But there's more. Everybody -- everybody who is made at the government stops there. We're going to abolish it. We're going to burn it down.

Okay. You have a right to do that. But you'll notice, there's not a period after that line in the Declaration of Independence.

To alter or abolish and -- key word -- and to institute a new government, laying its foundation and organizing powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to make them happy and secure in those rights.

Everybody now is for anarchy. Burn it down. No! You have a right to alter or abolish. But what are you going to replace it with?

And you only have the right to alter or abolish, if that government will hearken to the higher law. Nature's God and nature's laws. And that government is instituted to secure those rights, not to build more hospitals, more bridges. Not to ensure world peace or keep you safe from terrorists.

Now, progressives want you to believe that the Declaration of Independence is a worthless document. Then I contend, we are 229 years old and not 240, which everyone in the -- on the planet will tell you we're 240 years old.

Let me give you an example: The Declaration of Independence is the what we believe. What is it we believe?

Men got together. When you want to build a house, you generally meet with an architect. And the architect says, "What do you want it to be like? Be specific. I want to know, what do you want it to feel like? What do you want it to look like? How do you want to use the rooms? What do you want to see in the windows? Do you -- what do you want?"

And you start generally, "We want something cozy. We want something magnificent. We want something to bring the outdoors in. I want to stop seeing the dreary weather. I don't want to see my neighbor." Whatever it is.

But generally speaking, an architect wants to hear what you feel. What is the point of each room? What is the point of your house, and what should it say?

When you finish that and they finish the document, you engage him to do it, and you sign a contract. Everybody in the room signs a contract. This is what we want. We're going to build that.

Then you have to go get a builder. And the builder comes in. And you say, "See this? I want to build this." And he says, "Okay. Well, to build that, I'm going to need this amount of money. I'm going need to these things. We're going to have to do this. We might have to change your vision a little bit here or there."

All men are created equal -- you got some slavery going on here. We might have to change some things. But I understand your intent.

Are all people going to be equal? Are you telling me that all the kids can use any bedroom at any time?

Yes, the baby's room can't be a baby's room the whole time. The baby is going to grow up. So, yes. We said that that's the baby room, but it has to be a room that a teenager could be in too.

Okay. Just want to make sure. Because you said it was the baby's room.

Yes, but things will change.

Okay. Great.

And you all sign that document.

Now, if you've had a problem with a contractor, like everybody has, you might also do a third document that says, "Oh, by the way, I've been burned by some contractors before, and you will not do these things." I know you're the contractor, but you do not have the right to do these things to my house or my property or my money.

Now, you know who didn't sign something like that? The builder of the Guggenheim. The builder of Falling Waters. Frank Lloyd Wright. He didn't care what you wanted.

In fact, he -- he went so far as one of his houses, the woman said, "I collect art, and my art is really important. And I want art on all of the walls." It pissed him off so much, that she would dare tell him what to do, he made it impossible for her to hang any art on the wall of her home.

Instead, he built a special room with little easels and a stairway to a loft up above, where she could walk up the stairs and look down at the easels at her art. That is what you get from working with Frank Lloyd Wright. That's a guy that you would have a third Bill of Rights -- yeah, you can't do these things.

This is the Declaration of Independence. What do we want the house to feel like? The Constitution is how do you build that? And the third one is, you can't do these things. The Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights restricts the contractor so you don't end up Frank Lloyd Wright. If you take away, what do we want it to look like? That's the architect's renderings

PAT: And, again, that's exactly why the Bill of Rights is a charter of negative liberties. It tells the --

GLENN: Yes.

PAT: It tells the builder what he cannot do to the house.

GLENN: Correct.

PAT: Because if you tell him the things he can do, anything that's not spelled out, he'll believe is his right.

GLENN: His right to do.

PAT: And he can go ahead and do it.

GLENN: Right. And so they say, we want to make it clear. It's in the first document that among these things -- put we just want to make that really clear.

PAT: These aren't the only things.

GLENN: We know that that's in the draft here. We know that the architect has put that in. So you can see the pretty picture and it's in the plans, but we want you to know: Those aren't the only things. There are also these things that you cannot do to the house.

And if you don't have the architectural drawings, the builder doesn't know what the hell he's even building.

That's the problem. The progressives, the first thing they did was get rid of the Declaration of Independence. It doesn't make any sense. What did Martin Luther King say? What stopped us? It wasn't the Constitution.

It was -- it's about time this country starts living up to its ideals, that all men are created equal.

Well, if the Declaration of Independence is worthless, then why should we give a flying crap about that?

Because we hold that truth to be self-evident, that's why. Because that's the house that we built. That's the image of who we are. The machinery with the Constitution may have gotten lost because the builder is no longer even using it as a reference point anymore.

And, in fact, the builder is saying, "By the way, I think those warnings that you said that I can't do those things, that third document -- I don't even think that third document, I can interpret that. And believe me. I've got nine other contractors over here, and they've looked at your -- your building plans. You can't build a house that way."

Well, wait a minute. I'm sorry. You get your power from the consent of me. So I guess your nine little men over there don't count over my vote. Because I got my family -- my 330 million people together, and they outweigh your nine freaking people, Mr. Contractor. So you're going to leave it there.

But we do what most people do when they're building a house: I knew that was wrong. I didn't want to say anything because I thought they knew better. And then you're living in a house you hate.

That is the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Restore that, and you won't have a problem with globalism. Because the house was never designed to be globalist!

Follow these three things, and we won't have a problem with poverty. Because it says we have the rights and the responsibilities to care for each other, not the government.

Follow those things, and we're going to be okay.

Featured Image: The Glenn Beck Program

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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.