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Stephen Colbert's Childish, In-kind Rant Doesn't Help the Country

May 02, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Comedian and TV host Stephen Colbert didn't like how the president treated a CBS reporter in a recent interview. Admittedly, the president did not behave in an admirable way, but does stooping to his level make it better?

"There's a difference between joking with people who you love, joking with people who you like and then just telling a racist joke. When you're just out telling a racist joke because you hate 'them' --- fill in the blank --- then it's no longer comedy. It's a statement," Glenn said Tuesday on radio.

RELATED: Stephen Colbert Unleashes All-out Trump Takedown: ‘I Love Your Presidency, I Call It “Disgrace the Nation.”'

Stephen Colbert clearly made a statement with his response. Not only that, he became part of the problem --- but where does it end?

"By feeding back into it, [they think] 'we're not the lying media,'" Glenn said. "Shut up. Just prove it. Just live it. Show us that he's wrong."

Listen to this segment beginning at mark 2:56 from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: I want you to listen to Stephen Colbert and -- and CBS broadcast entity, what they broadcast last night about Donald Trump. Listen to this.

STEPHEN: Walking out in the middle of a sentence wasn't even the president's biggest insult to John Dickerson.

DONALD: And I think, actually, I've been very consistent. You know, it's very funny when the fake media goes out -- you know, which we call the mainstream, which sometimes I must say is you.

VOICE: You mean me personally? Or --

DONALD: Your show. I love your show. I call it Deface the Nation.

STEPHEN: Really?

GLENN: Okay. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Anybody think that's a smart move on President Trump's?

PAT: No.

GLENN: Anybody think that was a classy move?

PAT: No.

GLENN: Anybody think that you want to defend President Trump on stuff like that?

PAT: No.

STU: At least he said it to his face, I'll give him that.

GLENN: Right.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: If you are going to get into a fight with a bully like that, what do you do? One of two things: You either punch back harder. And if the bully is -- is known to throw haymakers, you're going to get into a fight until one of you can't get up. Okay?

Only one's walking away from a fight like that. The other way to win in a fight like that is to kill them with kindness. Not play that game. The American way is to not play that game.

Now I want you to listen to Stephen Colbert.

STEPHEN: Donald Trump, John Dickerson is a fair-minded journalist and one of the most competent people who will ever walk into your office, and you treat him like that?

Now, John Dickerson has way too much dignity to trade insults with the president of the United States to his face. But I, sir, am no John Dickerson.

PAT: Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Here it comes.

(laughter)

STEPHEN: Okay.

GLENN: That is the sound of the republic dying.

STEPHEN: Let me introduce you to something we call the Tiffany way. When you insult one member of the CBS family, you insult us all. Bazinga. All right? Here we go. All right?

PAT: He's on one now.

(laughter)

STEPHEN: Mr. Trump, your presidency, I love your presidency. I call it Disgrace the Nation.

GLENN: Now, listen to this.

STU: That's funny because it's the same joke.

PAT: Similar. Similar.

STEPHEN: You're the glutton with a button. You're a regular Gorge Washington. You're the presidunce, but you're turning into a real pricktator.

(laughter)

GLENN: That's the Tiffany way.

PAT: That was naughty.

STEPHEN: You attract more skinheads than free Rogaine. You have more people marching against you than cancer. You talk like a signed language gorilla who got hit in the head. In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's (bleep) holster.

PAT: Whoa.

GLENN: Wow.

(applauding)

STEPHEN: Your presidential library --

GLENN: Man.

STEPHEN: Your presidential library is going to be a kid's menu and a couple of Juggs magazines. The only thing smaller than your hands is your tax returns. You can take that any way you want.

PAT: Okay.

STEPHEN: We've got a great show for you tonight.

PAT: Wow. He's got a great show for us tonight. All evidence to the contrary. But thanks.

STU: Yeah, his tax returns, he hasn't released those yet.

PAT: Right. He's comparing that to some body part.

STU: Right. But his tax returns haven't been released. That's why it's funny to say that. Because his tax returns haven't been released yet. And it's a good observation about his tax returns because he hasn't released those. So when he brings that up, it's funny because he hasn't even released them. I don't know if you saw that in the news.

GLENN: So the press --

STU: So horrible.

PAT: So bad.

GLENN: The press is -- the press just doesn't understand what they're doing. They just don't have any clue as to what they're doing.

When I -- when I went and started talking to members of the press and members of the opposite side. I said to them, "Please, don't make the mistakes that I made." Now --

PAT: And how much did they yell and scream about respect for the president?

GLENN: Oh, my.

PAT: Treating the president so badly. Jeez.

GLENN: That is -- look, what their response will be, "This president is so much worse -- how dare you even compare." It doesn't matter. It's the president of the United States. And beyond that, you are sounding like him. You have become just as despicable as him. When you say that, you know, look at the child-like behavior -- look at the child-like behavior, except he's doing it professionally. And so that's the little line that you have in your head. Well, I'm a comedian. That's not comedy. That's third grade comedy. That you could feel viscerally he felt that. Comedy stops becoming comedy when it it's real.

Now, every joke -- I mean, the problem with comedy is every joke, somebody is on the losing end of it, always. But there's a difference between joking with people who -- who you love, joking with people who you like, and then just telling a racist joke. When you're just out telling a racist joke because you hate them, fill in the blank, then it's no longer comedy. It's a statement.

That's a statement. And he's being rewarded right now by ratings. But where does this end? The press doesn't understand. By feeding back into it, we're not the lying media. We're not the lying media. We're not the lying media.

Shut up. Just prove it. Just live it. Show us that he's wrong. But even in their own Correspondents' Dinner, they couldn't do that. Even in their own Correspondents' Dinner, where they were the ones putting it on and then they were the ones that reported on what they were doing, they didn't report on -- on what Woodward and Bernstein really had said. What they reported on was that Woodward or Bernstein -- I can't remember which -- had made some point to the president about fake news. That it's not all fake news.

But before that, they went on and on and on about the responsibility of the media. It's a two-way street. They didn't report on that.

They didn't think that that part was important. What they thought was important was the slam on Donald Trump and the president. Zero self-reflection. It's not going to end well for the media. It's not going to end well for America. It's not going to end well for -- this is separating -- you know, here's what my mistake was: When I've said in the past, because I hurt half the country, they will look at that statement and say, "Yeah, see, he knows he was wrong, and he was hurting by lying to all of those conservatives and whipping them up into a frenzy." No, no, no. No. I was so convinced that I was right and that you were wrong, that it didn't matter how you felt. That I was right. And if you disagreed with me and the millions of people that had agreed with me, you were too stupid to get it.

PAT: Also, you remember how bad it was -- I mean, we weren't saying anything like this about Obama. We -- we were saying the guy is a Marxist. He has Marxist tendencies.

GLENN: Well, that was racist for us to say that.

PAT: That was all racist, and that was all horrible. And that was disrespectful, when we were just talking about his ideology. This is all personal stuff. These are all fourth grade insults. You're calling him names. I mean, they're doing everything they claim to be against.

GLENN: So Samantha Bee, who is a friend of mine, Samantha Bee, she's doing an interview with Mother Jones of all places. Could you go further left? And she is -- they talk about the interview with me.

Mother Jones: You had an intriguing interview with Glenn Beck at Christmastime. I love the sweaters. About our political rift. Beck had admitted that he had done damage by being so divisive. He said to you, "Please don't make the mistakes that I made." Do you think this is a time for people trying to come together or more of an oppositional moment?

Samantha says: Both. Listen, we're not in Kumbaya Town here, but you need to be able to talk to people. You need to be able to agree from time to time if we're going to get anywhere.

Once you've started a civil dialogue, it's a much smoother road to compromise. The key thing to remember is it's a daily practice and it's not easy.

Glenn and I, in the strongest terms possible, disagree on a lot of things. When you can agree on one thing, you should have no expectation that suddenly a person is converted to your way of thinking. You have to be willing to be frustrated constantly. There are certain things that we can all agree on, are terrible for America. Beck loves this country. I love this country. I chose this country. Blah, blah, blah. I have respect for the Constitution.

Great. Samantha, you are making exactly the same mistake that I made. Exactly the same mistake.

Stephen Colbert, you are both getting so wrapped up in your anger and hatred and vitriol for this president, that you are forgetting that a third of this country, if not 50 percent of this country, still like the man. Still agree with him.

And every time -- every time you do a monologue like Stephen Colbert did, it makes it impossible for someone who is either in the center -- and says, "Look, I don't like either side," to rally around you. To rally for your side. Because you're both acting like children.

Our country is better than this. We're better than this.

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.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

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.