When You Teach Narcissism and Self-Absorption, You Get Narcissists and Self-Absorbed Students Protesting on Campus

August 07, 2017

WRITER

Monday on radio, Glenn talked with Dr. Everett Piper, President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University and long-time friend.

Glenn came to know Piper after reading his take on a student who felt victimized and voiced his discomfort at the university’s sermon regarding 1 Corinthians 13.

Open letter from university president: 'This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!'

Piper wrote, “You want the Chaplin to tell you you're a victim rather than you need virtue, this may not be the university you're looking for.”

Glenn spoke with Piper about the danger of ideological fascism and how universities are teaching students to play the victim if they ever feel convicted, attacked or uncomfortable.

“When you teach narcissism and self-absorption, you shouldn't be surprised to find narcissists and self-absorbed students protesting on the campus,” says Piper.

GLENN: I am about to reintroduce you to a friend of ours and a guy who I absolutely love. I love his intellect, and I love his bravery. It was two years ago on Thanksgiving that he wrote these words:

This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service because he felt victimized on the sermon on the topic of I Corinthians 13. It appears this young scholar felt offended because of homily on love that made him feel bad font showing love. In his mind, the speaker was the wrong for making him and his peers feel uncomfortable. I'm not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic. Any time their feelings are hurt, they are victims. Anyone who dares to challenge them and thus make them feel bad about themselves is a hater, bigot, oppressor, victimizer. I have a message for this young man and all others. That feeling of discomfort you have after hearing a sermon is called a conscious. It's supposed to make you feel bad. It's supposed to make you feel guilty. The goal of a good sermon is to make you confess your sins, not caudle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the church and the Christian faith.

So here's my advice. You want the Chaplin to tell you you're a victim rather than you need virtue, this may not be the university you're looking for. And he goes on.

His name is Dr. Everett Piper. He is the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan university and our guest. Welcome, sir.

EVERETT: Well, first of all, I owe you a thanks. Thank you for posting that article. It was Thanksgiving morning two years ago, someone gave that to you. I don't know who it was to this day.

GLENN: I wonder who it was.

EVERETT: And it caught your attention, and you posted it. And as a result of that, 3.5 million people viewed it within the course of about a week or two. The response was interesting. 97 percent of the comments were positive. 3 percent were negative when we did our internal statistical analysis of that.

It was interesting. The secular world was more interested and complementary than the Christian world, the church. Here's a poster child, for example. I receive a hard copied letter from a full bright scholar of a university in the south. And he essentially said I read your day care piece. I went to your website and read more about you. I'm an atheist, and I disagree with your religion, and I disagree with your politics. But on this issue, thank you. Kudos to you. Carry on. It needed to be said. Signed full bright scholar University of X, Y, Z.

So the reaction has been quite interesting. And I do believe what this says is that the secularist, the humanist, if you will, the average college and university faculty member out there is recognizing that this monster he's created is turning around to bite him. And he's frightened.

GLENN: Yes, they are. By the way, the name of the book is not a day -- not a day care. The original op-ed pretty much relentlessly pounded that. This university is not a day care. You're here for a reason. I was just out in L.A. I was with people who do not have my political bent by any stretch of the imagination. We had great conversations. Several of them told me they were concerned about what was happening in universities and the way dissent is being shut down. They said that is absolutely anti everything, you know? The left is supposed to stand for. They said two of them in this meeting openly said they are more concerned about what's happening on the left than they are that's happening on the right because they don't think the people on the left have really woken up to the monster that they -- that they're sleeping with.

EVERETT: And they should be frightened. I would call it idea logical fascism. Is this intellectual freedom or idea logical fascism. Do we believe in a free, robust, open exchange of ideas? The idea of the classical liberal arts academy. If you want to go back 1,000 years to the founding of Oxford, what was it established to do? It was established to educate a free man, a free people, a free culture to educate people and what it meant to be liberated. It was an education in liberty and thus the classical definition of liberal.

Ironically today, it's the conservative such as myself who is more classically liberal than my left of Center-Counter part because I believe in a debate. I believe in a robust exchange of ideas because I can trust the truth to judge the debate. Not politics and power and people, not the pundit. But the principles of truth. GK Chesterton told us when you got rid of the big laws of god, you don't get liberty but rather thousands upon thousands of little laws that rush in to from the vacuum. We have a situation where we actually have been teaching students for decades that it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it works for you. And that vacuum is being filled by fascism, ideological fascism rather than intellectual freedom.

GLENN: So you are writing this. The devastating consequences of abandoning the truth, the book is not a day care. What are the consequences?

EVERETT: The consequences are ultimately the loss of human dignity, human identity, and human freedom. If you can't even define the human beings any longer, if we don't know the definition of simple words, such as male and female, if we can't define what it means to be human, we're going to dumb down the definition of the human being to the imago dog. What do I mean by that? I am the imago dei. I have moral capability, moral understanding, I can engage in a debate. I care about the answer. When you drive through the cattle rancher in Oklahoma, you don't see the cows arguing with one another. There's a reason for that. They don't care. They're not the imago dei. They're the imago dog, if you will. They follow their base inclinations and appetites and instincts, and that's how they're defined. Today, we've dumbed down the human being to nothing but the sum total of his or her inclinations, that's their identity. And therefore, we have insulted the imago dei by suggesting he's the imago dog. The result of that is the total collapse of freedom and liberty within a culture because there's no longer any boundaries as Chesterton said in which we can live freely.

GLENN: So I read -- have you read the ten-page memo from the Google software guy? I'm trying to remember what his job was. He wrote -- this was just released last week. He won't put his name on it. But it was about the lies of Google diversity. And he's, like, you're telling us that there is no difference between a man and a woman, and you want to get more women into, you know, software design, et cetera, et cetera. But that is a job that mainly men are interested in because of X, Y, and Z. It has nothing to do with sexism. And he goes through ten pages. He just takes apart everything that they're talking about.

Google finally responded to this unnamed memo with their head of -- I can't even remember what it is. It's not the head of diversity. It's some ridiculous clown title, and she writes "I won't even dignify that -- what was being said by requoting it here because it has nothing to do with reality and who we are as Google."

While at the same time saying that we have to have a vigorous debate on the Google campus. They're shutting all debate down. How does this society -- in the old world, it doesn't survive. But in a society where Google is working on AI and teaching computers, you know, artificial intelligence, the difference between right and wrong. When we can't define it, what happens to that society?

EVERETT: Your question goes back to what's going on in the academy right now. What's taught today in the classroom is going to be practiced tomorrow in our culture and our courtrooms and our living rooms. What's taught today in the classroom will be practiced tomorrow. Ideas have consequences. If you go back to Richard weaver 1948, his seminal work title, what was his point? Ideas of consequences. You hardly even need to read the book to understand his point. Bad ideas will breed bad culture, bad people, bad community, bad government. And good ideas will bring the opposite. Good culture, good community, good kids, good behavior, and good government.

Ideas have consequences. What's -- why is the timing of his book, 1948 important? Because he was writing it as a response to World War II. And he was looking backward just a few short years to Hitler who said let me control the textbooks, and I will control the state. And at the same time, we've got or we will and Huxley writing dystopias total power and total control. Ideas have consequences, and we have to attend to what we're teaching our students today because it will bear itself out tomorrow. And when you teach narcissism and self absorption, you shouldn't be surprised to find narcissists and self-absorbed students protesting in the campus.

GLENN: So Tonya and I have this conversation a lot. My kids are 11 and 13. My older kids are already out of college, and I keep saying I don't want to send them to college, honey. First of all, I don't know if college is going to be all that because, you know, show me the teacher that is as smart as Google on the facts. I can just look up the facts. I want to find somebody who is more of a guide that will help me apply these things that I can find. And I said, you know, but even if we're not even at that place yet, I don't want my kids going and being indoctrinated.

What is going to happen to the university? What is going to happen in the next five years, ten years as these things are getting worse and worse? And people know it.

>> I think you should let your pocketbook speak. Okay? If moms and dads, if parents will actually start recognizing that they're paying the bill, you're going to drop 30 grand, 35 grand, 40 grand for your kid to go to an institution. You spend 18 years of your life training your kid the way they should go. And then the first 18 minutes they take pride and start taking his soul and his mind and ridiculing everything you've tried to instill in him. Why would you want to pay for that? Ask yourself is education about integrity or is it about information? Is education just to learn how to make more money, or is it about how to learn to be a moral person? Is education about character, or is it about just getting a career? There was a day when education was about the big ideas, the first things. Not the small ideas and the second things. I'm a student of Chuck Colson, and he was found of telling us over and over again that if you get the big ideas, the first question wrong, everything thereafter will suffer. You have to provide an education to your kids that focuses on the big ideas.

GLENN: What's the push back on you from academia? You must not be very popular.

>> Well, it all depends on who you're talking to. Interesting, this is the right answer. I've had lots of people peers, other presidents and whatnot pull me aside privately and say I agree with what you're saying, but I can't say it publicly for fear of losing my job. And that's the reaction. That's sad, but it is true.

PAT: Let's out them now. Who are these?

GLENN: You know, it's funny because I think there's a lot of that. And not just in universities. There's a lot, and we're dealing with a situation now in Oregon where the CPS I think has gone way over the edge and out of control because of one particular person. I think this is what's happening. And we have people now starting to come out saying. Okay. If you guys think you can actually expose it and win, I have some information for you. But I'm not in, unless you can win. I mean, it's valkyrie. You don't win. A society doesn't survive if people stand on the sidelines.

EVERETT: Well, I know you're a fan of Bonhoeffer, as am I, and one of the famous quotes is "not to speak as to speak, not to act as act, silence in the face of evil as evil itself." That's worth the price of admission. Not to speak as to speak, not to act as act, silence in the face of evil as evil itself. God will not hold us guilt willingness.

Do we believe in our trues. Do we believe those things are right and true and revealing, those self-evident trues. Do we believe in them enough to speak and to act? Because if we don't, we're actually acting and speaking for the opposite. We have to have courage and some conviction. The academy, presidents and professors need to get a spine and start teaching truth rather than just opinions.

GLENN: Is it hard -- I've got to take a quick break. But is it hard to find those professors and teachers that still will?

EVERETT: Yes. But you can. There are a handful. And if parents who are paying the money do the research necessary, you can find those institutions that actually say we believe that truth is revelation as opposed to a construction. That's the answer you need to hear. Is truth self-evident? Is it given by someone bigger and better than you and me? Or is it just constructed by the populous. If it's constructed by the populous, it's dangerous. If it's given by God, if it's given by revelation, then it's enduring, immutable, and true.

EXPOSED: Your tax dollars FUND Marxist riots in LA

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Protesters wore Che shirts, waved foreign flags, and chanted Marxist slogans — but corporate media still peddles the ‘spontaneous outrage’ narrative.

I sat in front of the television this weekend, watching the glittering spectacle of corporate media do what it does best: tell me not to believe my lying eyes.

According to the polished news anchors, what I was witnessing in Los Angeles was “mostly peaceful protests.” They said it with all the earnest gravitas of someone reading a bedtime story, while behind them the streets looked like a deleted scene from “Mad Max.” Federal agents dodged concrete slabs as if it were an Olympic sport. A man in a Che Guevara crop top tried to set a police car on fire. Dumpster fires lit the night sky like some sort of postapocalyptic luau.

If you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

But sure, it was peaceful. Tear gas clouds and Molotov cocktails are apparently the incense and candles of this new civic religion.

The media expects us to play along — to nod solemnly while cities burn and to call it “activism.”

Let’s call this what it is: delusion.

Another ‘peaceful’ riot

If the Titanic “mostly floated” and the Hindenburg “mostly flew,” then yes, the latest L.A. riots are “mostly peaceful.” But history tends to care about those tiny details at the end — like icebergs and explosions.

The coverage was full of phrases like “spontaneous,” “grassroots,” and “organic,” as if these protests materialized from thin air. But many of the signs and banners looked like they’d been run off at ComradesKinkos.com — crisp print jobs with slogans promoting socialism, communism, and various anti-American regimes. Palestinian flags waved beside banners from Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and El Salvador. It was like someone looted a United Nations souvenir shop and turned it into a revolution starter pack.

And guess who funded it? You did.

According to at least one report, much of this so-called spontaneous rage fest was paid for with your tax dollars. Tens of millions of dollars from the Biden administration ensured your paycheck funded Trotsky cosplayers chucking firebombs at local coffee shops.

The same aging radicals from the 1970s — now armed with tenure, pensions, and book deals — are cheering from the sidelines, waxing poetic about how burning a squad car is “liberation.” These are the same folks who once wore tie-dye and flew to help guerrilla fighters and now applaud chaos under the banner of “progress.”

This is not progress. It is not protest. It’s certainly not justice or peace.

It’s an attempt to dismantle the American system — and if you dare say that out loud, you’re labeled a bigot, a fascist, or, worst of all, someone who notices reality.

And what sparked this taxpayer-funded riot? Enforcement against illegal immigrants — many of whom, according to official arrest records, are repeat violent offenders. These are not the “dreamers” or the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. These are criminals with long, violent rap sheets — allowed to remain free by a broken system that prioritizes ideology over public safety.

Photo by Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg | Getty Images

This is what people are rioting over — not the mistreatment of the innocent, but the arrest of the guilty. And in California, that’s apparently a cause for outrage.

The average American, according to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, is supposed to worry they’ll be next. But unless you’re in the habit of assaulting people, smuggling, or firing guns into people’s homes, you probably don’t have much to fear.

Still, if you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

The left has lost it

This is what happens when a culture loses its grip on reality. We begin to call arson “art,” lawlessness “liberation,” and criminals “community members.” We burn the good and excuse the evil — all while the media insists it’s just “vibes.”

But it’s not just vibes. It’s violence, paid for by you, endorsed by your elected officials, and whitewashed by newsrooms with more concern for hair and lighting than for truth.

This isn’t activism. This is anarchism. And Democratic politicians are fueling the flame.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck's 'No King but Christ' merch: Will faith STOP the chaos?

On Saturday, June 14, 2025 (President Trump's 79th birthday), the "No Kings" protest—a noisy spectacle orchestrated by progressive heavyweights like Randi Weingarten and her union cronies—will take place in Washington, D.C.

Thousands will chant "no thrones, no crowns, no king," claiming to fend off authoritarianism and corruption.

But let’s cut through the noise. The protesters' grievances—rigged courts, deported citizens, slashed services—are a house of cards. Zero Americans have been deported, Federal services are still bloated, and if anyone is rigging the courts, it's the Left. So why rally now, especially with riots already flaring in L.A.?

Chaos isn’t a side effect here—it’s the plan.

This is not about liberty; it's a power grab dressed up as resistance. The "No Kings" crowd wants you to buy their script: government’s the enemy—unless they’re the ones running it. It's the identical script from 2020: same groups, same tactics, same goal, different name.

But Glenn is flipping the script. He's dropping a new "No Kings but Christ" merch line, just in time for the protest. Merch that proclaims one truth: no earthly ruler owns us; only Christ does. It’s a bold, faith-rooted rejection of this secular circus.

Why should you care? Because this won’t just be a rally—it’ll be a symptom. Distrust in institutions is sky-high, and rightly so, but the "No Kings" answer is a hollow shout into the void. Glenn’s merch begs the question: if you’re ditching kings, who’s really in charge? Get yours and wear the answer proudly.

Truth unleashed: 95% say media’s excuses for anti-Semitism are a LIE

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Glenn asked for YOUR take on the rising tide of anti-Semitism, and you delivered. After the Boulder attack, you made it clear: this isn’t just a news story—it’s a crisis the elites are dodging.

Your verdict is unmistakable: 96% of you see anti-Semitism as a growing threat in the U.S., brushing aside the establishment’s weak excuses. The spin does not fool you—95% say the media is deliberately downplaying the issue, hiding a cultural rot that’s all too real. And the government’s response? A whopping 95% of you call it a disgraceful failure, leaving communities exposed.

Your voices shatter the silence. Why should we trust narratives that dismiss your concerns? With 97% of you warning that anti-Semitism will surge in the years ahead, you’re demanding action and accountability. This is your stand for truth.

You spoke, and Glenn listened. Your bold response sends a message to those who’d rather ignore the problem. Keep raising your voice at Glennbeck.com—your input drives the fight for justice. Take part in the next poll and continue shaping the conversation.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

JPMorgan Chase CEO issues dire warning about America's prosperity

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Jamie Dimon has a grim forecast for America — and it’s not a recession. He sees a fragile nation drifting into crisis while its leaders fight over TikTok.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase — one of the most powerful financial institutions on earth — issued a warning the other day. But it wasn’t about interest rates, crypto, or monetary policy.

Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California, Dimon pivoted from economic talking points to something far more urgent: the fragile state of America’s physical preparedness.

We are living in a moment of stunning fragility — culturally, economically, and militarily. It means we can no longer afford to confuse digital distractions with real resilience.

“We shouldn’t be stockpiling Bitcoin,” Dimon said. “We should be stockpiling guns, tanks, planes, drones, and rare earths. We know we need to do it. It’s not a mystery.”

He cited internal Pentagon assessments showing that if war were to break out in the South China Sea, the United States has only enough precision-guided missiles for seven days of sustained conflict.

Seven days — that’s the gap between deterrence and desperation.

This wasn’t a forecast about inflation or a hedge against market volatility. It was a blunt assessment from a man whose words typically move markets.

“America is the global hegemon,” Dimon continued, “and the free world wants us to be strong.” But he warned that Americans have been lulled into “a false sense of security,” made complacent by years of peacetime prosperity, outsourcing, and digital convenience:

We need to build a permanent, long-term, realistic strategy for the future of America — economic growth, fiscal policy, industrial policy, foreign policy. We need to educate our citizens. We need to take control of our economic destiny.

This isn’t a partisan appeal — it’s a sobering wake-up call. Because our economy and military readiness are not separate issues. They are deeply intertwined.

Dimon isn’t alone in raising concerns. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has warned that China has already overtaken the U.S. in key defense technologies — hypersonic missiles, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence to mention a few. Retired military leaders continue to highlight our shrinking shipyards and dwindling defense manufacturing base.

Even the dollar, once assumed untouchable, is under pressure as BRICS nations work to undermine its global dominance. Dimon, notably, has said this effort could succeed if the U.S. continues down its current path.

So what does this all mean?

Christopher Furlong / Staff | Getty Images

It means we are living in a moment of stunning fragility — culturally, economically, and militarily. It means we can no longer afford to confuse digital distractions with real resilience.

It means the future belongs to nations that understand something we’ve forgotten: Strength isn’t built on slogans or algorithms. It’s built on steel, energy, sovereignty, and trust.

And at the core of that trust is you, the citizen. Not the influencer. Not the bureaucrat. Not the lobbyist. At the core is the ordinary man or woman who understands that freedom, safety, and prosperity require more than passive consumption. They require courage, clarity, and conviction.

We need to stop assuming someone else will fix it. The next crisis — whether military, economic, or cyber — will not politely pause for our political dysfunction to sort itself out. It will demand leadership, unity, and grit.

And that begins with looking reality in the eye. We need to stop talking about things that don’t matter and cut to the chase: The U.S. is in a dangerously fragile position, and it’s time to rebuild and refortify — from the inside out.