Why Glenn Will Be the Happiest Man in the World if He Has to Apologize Every Day

February 01, 2017

WRITER

The country needs Donald Trump to be successful. And as long as he's leading and governing in a way that honors constitutional principles, Glenn will be the first in line to make apologies when he's wrong --- but there's one contingent.

"I will never abandon my principles for what I think might happen. Because too many times, as we have seen with Supreme Court justices, what I think will happen isn't what happens. I will stick by my principles because they are unchanging, and I will trust God to work it out," Glenn said Wednesday on radio.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Let me go to Ken in New York. Hello, Ken. You're on the Glenn Beck Program.

CALLER: Hi. Hi, Glenn. It's great to talk to you.

GLENN: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I called you before Donald Trump's selection, and I argued with you that he needed to be elected because of the Supreme Court. And I was mad at you because you weren't promoting him. And I appreciate your apology.

It makes you a better man.

GLENN: Well, I told you --

CALLER: But now you're doing it again.

GLENN: Hang on just a second, Ken, I told you that I would. And the one thing that I -- and the only thing that matters to me is my integrity. I told you that I would, and I have. So I'm sorry that people are disappointed -- or, I mean, surprised that I would actually do that. It shows me that I --

CALLER: Oh, I'm not surprised.

GLENN: Okay. Good. Okay. So now I'm doing it again. How?

CALLER: I think you should buy one of those -- you should buy one of those Staples Buttons and change the wording to where it says "I'm sorry" because you're going to have to do it again.

GLENN: I'll be -- as I said during the election, I will be the happiest man in the world if I have to apologize every day because I was wrong about Donald Trump. I want him -- the country needs him to be successful.

CALLER: I agree.

The -- we have a famous president who was loved by all and endeared by all. And he made a quote one day, and that was, "Elections have consequences." And so our next Supreme Court pick, if it's Ginsburg who leaves us by hook or by crook, Donald Trump has every right to appoint a conservative constitutionalist again.

GLENN: Well, wait. Wait. Wait. Hang on just a second. If you think that I'm saying that Donald Trump shouldn't replace Ginsburg with a conservative, then I misspoke. What I said was --

CALLER: I totally misunderstood you then.

GLENN: Yeah. What if Ginsburg were the last radical, progressive on the court and it was a Democratic president, a progressive president, they would have every right and they should replace -- and I would look at that as fair. If we're looking at -- we're looking at a court now that really has no constitutional conservative on it, except Clarence Thomas.

The rest of them can go either way. And they'll all -- you know, John Roberts is absolutely useless.

STU: Alito is good. Alito is good.

GLENN: Alito is good. But if you have the lion -- if you have the lion of the side and your guy is in there, they should replace. If Ginsburg was the only voice that was really leading the charge, she should be replaced. We can't have a court that is -- that shuts out 50 percent of the country. We can't do that.

CALLER: Well, it would be nice if the entire court just believed the Constitution to be the rule of law and made their decisions based on the rule of law and the Constitution, and we wouldn't care what party and what affiliations they had.

GLENN: If you got strict constitutionalists that actually interpreted the Constitution as it was written, it would be the solution to all of our problems.

Unfortunately, we don't have those justices. If --

CALLER: No.

GLENN: But one of the reasons why we don't is because we have done a very bad job, not as conservatives, not as Republicans, but as Americans, of understanding and being able to teach and spread the word of the Constitution.

It's a lot like -- it's a lot like faith. Faith, many times, has become a tool to either get rich or to build a big church or to bring people into the fold that agree with you and then put a bunch of rules on them.

Faith, to me, religion, is used too many times to control people.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

GLENN: When you really understand faith, God has rules. But they're between you and him, not the organization or anything else. You and him.

And it is the most freeing thing. Those simple rules will free you and make you more free than you've ever been in your entire life. It's an amazing thing. The same thing with the Constitution. There are very few rules. Those amendments, if you just go with the Bill of Rights and we all really did that, no matter whose side it hurt or won for -- you know, well, now, wait a minute, that will hurt my religion or that will hurt my agenda or this or that.

No. You stick by those simple rules, and we'll all be free. And we'll all live happily ever after and together.

STU: That was one of the great things that he said. Gorsuch was, if you're not making decisions that make you feel uncomfortable, based on whatever your particular beliefs are, is because you're following the law, then you're not a very good justice. You have to be following the law. Sometimes that will disagree with what you want to happen.

GLENN: Absolutely.

STU: But you follow the law and the Constitution anyway. And sometimes that will make you uncomfortable.

GLENN: Right. And the Constitution is paramount. Not the law.

STU: Yes.

GLENN: The Constitution is paramount. You know, for instance, it makes me very, very uncomfortable to not be able to just tap people's phones who we just think, "You know, I don't know, that guy is shady. We should listen -- and especially if everybody in the room is standing around you, going, "Look, every other country is doing this. We got -- we got to be able to do those."

No, I'm sorry. And I will take the blame for this if it turns out bad, but I'm going to make the case that that is what makes us unlike all other countries.

No president or anybody else has the power to say, "You know what, put him on an enemy's list. Let's follow him. Let's destroy him. Let's tap him."

If we can gather enough evidence, guys, and go to a court and do it through the Constitution, as an individual, good, let's do it.

If you can't gather that evidence, sorry. That's really uncomfortable, if you're sitting there as the president of the United States and saying, "Gee, I don't know, man. Something happens, and if that guy gets away, then I'm going to be blamed for it." Yeah, you will be. Tough, isn't it? Because the one to really blame is the Constitution. And the Constitution is freeing in the end.

Otherwise, what happens? You say, "Oh, you know what, I don't have a problem."

By hook or by crook -- that's a quote -- we're going to pole vault into it if we have to. We'll do anything it takes to get this done, even though it's unconstitutional.

What does that lead you to? Somebody else that gets power in the Oval Office that says, "By hook or by crook, I'm going to do whatever I want by executive order." And all of a sudden, you don't like it.

The Constitution would take away everybody's need to protest in the streets.

CALLER: Are you still there?

STU: We are.

GLENN: Go ahead, Ken.

CALLER: I just want to say that during the campaign, you were very adamant about principle, that you didn't want to be drug into voting for something against your principle by voting for Trump.

And I'd just like to say again that I hope you'll rethink that philosophy because of the outcome of this election and how, you know, even I was wrong in some of the ideas that I thought was going to happen. But we really need to vote for the best president.

GLENN: No, I don't think so. I will never rethink -- hang on a second.

I will never abandon my principles for what I think might happen. Because too many times, as we have seen with Supreme Court justices, what I think will happen isn't what happens.

I will stick by my principles because they are unchanging. And I will trust God to work it out.

CALLER: Yeah.

GLENN: Thank you, Ken. I appreciate it.

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VIDEO: Both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama are radicals, but there's one HUGE difference

Biden backs yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences

The number of people serving life sentences now exceeds the entire prison population in 1970, according to newly-released data from the Sentencing Project. The continued growth of life sentences is largely the result of "tough on crime" policies pushed by legislators in the 1990s, including presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Biden has since apologized for backing those types of policies, but it seems he has yet to learn his lesson. Indeed, Biden is backing yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences—mandatory drug treatment for all drug offenders.

Proponents of this policy argue that forced drug treatment will reduce drug usage and recidivism and save lives. But the evidence simply isn't on their side. Mandatory treatment isn't just patently unethical, it's also ineffective—and dangerous.

Many well-meaning people view mandatory treatment as a positive alternative to incarceration. But there's a reason that mandatory treatment is also known as "compulsory confinement." As author Maya Schenwar asks in The Guardian, "If shepherding live human bodies off to prison to isolate and manipulate them without their permission isn't ethical, why is shipping those bodies off to compulsory rehab an acceptable alternative?" Compulsory treatment isn't an alternative to incarceration. It is incarceration.

Compulsory treatment is also arguably a breach of international human rights agreements and ethical standards. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have made it clear that the standards of ethical treatment also apply to the treatment of drug dependence—standards that include the right to autonomy and self-determination. Indeed, according to UNODC, "people who use or are dependent on drugs do not automatically lack the capacity to consent to treatment...consent of the patient should be obtained before any treatment intervention." Forced treatment violates a person's right to be free from non-consensual medical treatment.

It's a useless endeavor, anyway, because studies have shown that it doesn't improve outcomes in reducing drug use and criminal recidivism. A review of nine studies, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, failed to find sufficient evidence that compulsory drug treatment approaches are effective. The results didn't suggest improved outcomes in reducing drug use among drug-dependent individuals enrolled in compulsory treatment. However, some studies did suggest potential harm.

According to one study, 33% of compulsorily-treated participants were reincarcerated, compared to a mere 5% of the non-treatment sample population. Moreover, rates of post-release illicit drug use were higher among those who received compulsory treatment. Even worse, a 2016 report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that people who received involuntary treatment were more than twice as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose than those with a history of only voluntary treatment.

These findings echo studies published in medical journals like Addiction and BMJ. A study in Addiction found that involuntary drug treatment was a risk factor for a non-fatal drug overdose. Similarly, a study in BMJ found that patients who successfully completed inpatient detoxification were more likely than other patients to die within a year. The high rate of overdose deaths by people previously involuntarily treated is likely because most people who are taken involuntarily aren't ready to stop using drugs, authors of the Addiction study reported. That makes sense. People who aren't ready to get clean will likely use again when they are released. For them, the only post-treatment difference will be lower tolerance, thanks to forced detoxification and abstinence. Indeed, a loss of tolerance, combined with the lack of a desire to stop using drugs, likely puts compulsorily-treated patients at a higher risk of overdose.

The UNODC agrees. In their words, compulsory treatment is "expensive, not cost-effective, and neither benefits the individual nor the community." So, then, why would we even try?

Biden is right to look for ways to combat addiction and drug crime outside of the criminal justice system. But forced drug treatment for all drug offenders is a flawed, unethical policy, with deadly consequences. If the goal is to help people and reduce harm, then there are plenty of ways to get there. Mandatory treatment isn't one of them.

Lindsay Marie is a policy analyst for the Lone Star Policy Institute, an independent think tank that promotes freedom and prosperity for all Texans. You can follow her on Twitter @LindsayMarieLP.

BOMBSHELL: 'It wasn't just Hunter,' Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden was target of Ukraine corruption investigation — and he has the evidence to prove it

President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani joined Glenn Beck on Tuesday's radio program discuss the Senate's ongoing investigation into former vice president Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and reveal new bombshell documents he's currently releasing.

Giuliani told Glenn he has evidence of "very, very serious crime at the highest levels of government," that the "corrupt media" is doing everything in their power to discredit.

He also dropped some major, previously unreported news: not only was Hunter Biden under investigation in 2016, when then-Vice President Biden "forced" the firing of Ukraine's prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, but so was the vice president himself.

"Shokin can prove he was investigating Biden and his son. And I now have the prosecutorial documents that show, all during that period of time, not only was Hunter Biden under investigation -- Joe Biden was under investigation," Giuliani explained. "It wasn't just Hunter."

Watch this clip to get a rundown of everything Giuliani has uncovered so far.

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Revealing Bernie’s dark side — one 1980s quote at a time

For most Americans, the 1980s was marked by big hair, epic lightsaber battles, and school-skipping Ferris Bueller dancing his way into the hearts of millions.

But for Bernie Sanders — who, by the way, was at that time the oldest-looking 40-year-old in human history — the 1980s was a period of important personal milestones.

Prior to his successful 1980 campaign to become mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders was mostly known around the Green Mountain State as a crazy, wildly idealistic socialist. (Think Karl Marx meets Don Quixote.) But everything started to change for Sanders when he became famous—or, in the eyes of many, notorious—for being "America's socialist mayor."

As mayor, Sanders' radical ideas were finally given the attention he had always craved but couldn't manage to capture. This makes this period of his career particularly interesting to study. Unlike today, the Bernie Sanders of the 1980s wasn't concerned with winning over an entire nation — just the wave of far-left New York City exiles that flooded Vermont in the 1960s and 1970s — and he was much more willing to openly align himself with local and national socialist and communist parties.

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Over the past few weeks, I have been reading news reports of Sanders recorded in the 1980s — because, you know, that's how guys like me spend their Saturday nights — and what I've found is pretty remarkable.

For starters, Sanders had (during the height of the Soviet Union) a very cozy relationship with people who openly advocated for Marxism and communism. He was an elector for the Socialist Workers Party and promoted the party's presidential candidates in 1980 and 1984.

To say the Socialist Workers Party was radical would be a tremendous understatement. It was widely known SWP was a communist organization mostly dedicated to the teachings of Marx and Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution.

Among other radical things I've discovered in interviews Sanders conducted with the SWP's newspaper — appropriately named The Militant (seriously, you can't make this stuff up) — is a statement by Sanders published in June 1981 suggesting that some police departments "are dominated by fascists and Nazis," a comment that is just now being rediscovered for the first time in decades.

In 1980, Sanders lauded the Socialist Workers Party's "continued defense of the Cuban revolution." And later in the 1980s, Sanders reportedly endorsed a collection of speeches by the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, even though there had been widespread media reports of the Sandinistas' many human rights violations prior to Sanders' endorsement, including "restrictions on free movement; torture; denial of due process; lack of freedom of thought, conscience and religion; denial of the right of association and of free labor unions."

Sanders also traveled to Nicaragua and met with socialist President Daniel Ortega. He later called the trip a "profoundly emotional experience."

Comrade Bernie's disturbing Marxist past, which is far more extensive than what can be covered in this short article, shouldn't be treated as a mere historical footnote. It clearly illustrates that Sanders' brand of "democratic socialism" is much more than a $15 minimum wage and calls for single-payer health care. It's full of Marxist philosophy, radical revolutionary thinking, anti-police rhetoric, and even support for authoritarian governments.

Millions of Americans have been tricked into thinking Sanders isn't the radical communist the historical record — and even Sanders' own words — clearly show that he is. But the deeper I have dug into Comrade Bernie's past, the more evident it has become that his thinking is much darker and more dangerous and twisted than many of his followers ever imagined.

Tomorrow night, don't miss Glenn Beck's special exposing the radicals who are running Bernie Sanders' campaign. From top to bottom, his campaign is staffed with hard-left extremists who are eager to burn down the system. The threat to our constitution is very real from Bernie's team, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before in a U.S. election. Join Glenn on Wednesday, at 9 PM Eastern on BlazeTV's YouTube page, and on BlazeTV.com. And just in case you miss it live, the only way to catch all of Glenn's specials on-demand is by subscribing to Blaze TV.

Justin Haskins (Jhaskins@heartland.org) is editorial director of The Heartland Institute and editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com.

Candace Owens blasts leftist cancel culture: 'Godless', 'societal atom bomb'

Candace Owens, BLEXIT founder and author of the upcoming book, "Blackout," joined Glenn Beck on Friday's GlennTV for an exclusive interview. available only to BlazeTV subscribers.

Candace dropped a few truth-bombs about the progressive movement and what's happening to the Democratic Party. She said people are practically running away from the left due to their incessant push to dig up dirt on anybody who disagrees with their radical ideology. She explained how -- like China and its "social credit score" -- the left is shaping America into its own nightmarish episode of "Black Mirror."

"This game of making sure that everyone is politically correct is a societal atom bomb. There are no survivors. There's no one that is perfect," Candace said. "The idea that humanity can be perfect is Godless. If you accept that there is something greater than us, then you accept that we a flawed. To be human is to be flawed."

Enjoy this clip from the full episode below:

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BlazeTV subscribers can watch the full interview on BlazeTV.com. Use code GLENN to save $10 off one year of your subscription.