GLENN: Play the audio from Bill O'Reilly last night, why does Glenn Beck avoid the culture war ‑‑ why do I avoid the culture war? Uh...

STU: You are just afraid of controversy. That's your issue.

GLENN: That's me. My plate's a little full right now, Bill. That's what I really wanted to say and should have said. My plate's a little full right now. But here's what he said, and I want you to listen carefully.

O'REILLY: So Beck, you don't do a lot of culture war stuff on your program or on the radio show, either, right?

GLENN: I leave that to you.

O'REILLY: Why don't you do the culture warrior stuff?

GLENN: Because honestly right now, one part of culture that I am doing a lot of is faith. But general faith. We have got to get back to our churches, our synagogues, our mosques, whatever it is, as long as it's not telling you to blow things up, get back to God and get back to the founding principles.

O'REILLY: I don't know that's going to happen. I mean, it's a noble thing you are trying to do because spirituality is a good thing, introspection is a good thing, but let's take the gay marriage deal. You know, big ruling in California. You really didn't cover it that much, right?

GLENN: Nope.

O'REILLY: Why?

GLENN: Because honestly I think we have bigger fish to try. You can argue about abortion or gay marriage or whatever.

O'REILLY: Yeah.

GLENN: All you want.

O'REILLY: Yeah.

GLENN: The country is burning down. I personally ‑‑

O'REILLY: But isn't that one of the reasons because we're getting away from the traditional way we used to live into this progressively ‑‑

GLENN: So let's go back to ‑‑ instead of arguing about these divisive things, let's get back into our churches and our synagogues ‑‑

O'REILLY: You are not going to get people going back unless there's a reason to go back.

GLENN: Here's the reason. America, your country's burning down. I don't think marriage ‑‑

All right. It's remarkable to me. Listen to what he's saying. First of all, he wants to ‑‑ and God bless Bill O'Reilly and Bill has done more on the culture war than probably anybody else and has taken arrow after arrow after arrow after arrow for years until I showed up and now he uses me as a meat shield, but that's a different story. Listen to what he's saying. He's saying we've got to fight the regulation. What I'm saying is you cannot fight regulation unless you are a people that self‑regulate. How can you possibly expect to stand for principles when people don't understand the principles? You can't fix things. You can't go back and argue abortion back and forth. How are you going to do that? Unless you understand the value of life. And what ‑‑ it helps you with the value of life. The science, do politics? Well, what helps you with the value of life? Can you name anything other than religion? Nothing, nothing. So if we're no those people, you can't fix it. There is a ‑‑ to everything there is a season. This is the season for awakening. This is not the season for playing ‑‑ why are we depending on the same things that got us here? We're depending on parties. We're depending on the ballot box. We must be engaged in the ballot box, we must be engaged in politics. We must be engaged in watching our courts. We must be standing up for these things, but that is not the answer. That is not the answer. Look at what we do every time. We treat the symptom. We've got to stop treating the symptom. We're taking aspirin. We're hemorrhaging. We're hemorrhaging and we're treating that gash in the side of our neck or on our ‑‑ on an artery as if it's a flesh wound: Here, let me put some Bacitracin on it, here, let me just, let me just put a Band‑Aid on it, take some aspirin. We're hemorrhaging. We have cut an artery. We've got to go in and do the hard things. And that's on spending. We must do the hard things. And God bless you, America. God bless America. For 21 straight months, 21 straight months, you have lowered your debt. Now, the government doesn't like that because you're not spending money. And again for this system to work, you've got to spend money. But I'm telling you this system will never work. We're only delaying our death let it do what Coolidge did. Let it come down and retool. It led to the roaring Twenties. Cut it. I understand. We ‑‑ are you telling me that we are less of the people than we were? And maybe the answer to this is yes. I don't think so. But are we less of the people than we were in 1920? Are we less of the people than we were in 1865? Are we less of the people than we were in 1776, 1791? Are we less American? Only if we choose to be. Is this land less blessed than we've all been raised? Well, not all of us. Not the Marxists. Not almost everybody that works at the White House. Are we somehow or another less blessed as a land than we always have been? I think the answer to that one is yes. The question is, why? Has he removed himself? Or have we removed? God doesn't move. Man does. Man does. All we have to do is move back towards him. The blessings are still there. He's not done with man's freedom. He ‑‑ for his purposes to be accomplished, man must be free. That was the whole plan from the beginning! Free choice. Adam and Eve, come down. Why? Why did they eat the apple? They had to eat the apple! They had to. They had to have a knowledge of good and evil. They knew ‑‑ God knew we wouldn't make it. That's why Jesus comes. He knew we would struggle. This is the oldest story known to man, and freedom to choose is essential. Freedom to fail is essential. If God is so perfect, why did he create a man and a woman who he knew would fail? Why not just build them so they didn't fail? Just build them so they didn't make that choice? Why put the damn tree in the middle of the forest anyway? Why make the tree? It's always our choice, and he knew we were going to fail. The same thing with Thomas Jefferson. They knew we were going to fail. They knew it. But Thomas Jefferson in 1820 also wrote to John Adams and said, I have faith that when it does, the people will understand what we were trying to do.

I'm writing a book now for fall and it is probably our most frank book on politics because there's nothing to hold back, there's nothing ‑‑ what is the point? And I was going over it last night and working on it last night. What are the things that need to be restored? As I sat around the table with 25, 30 of the biggest experts on the court system, on finance, on business, on culture, on everything, I sat in this room ‑‑ I've done it several times now as we worked on this book. I got the best minds together, "What are we going to do, how do we fix it." The answer is always restore the Constitution, restore the founding principles. It's all there. Thomas Jefferson wrote, when these people ‑‑ when it fails, the people that restore it will understand what we were trying to do and they will organize themselves in stakes.

Now, what does that mean? That goes back to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy was the number one source for our founding documents. That's the law of Moses. Why would you organize yourself in stakes? Because they're blocks of ‑‑ I think he wrote 300 families. And once there's 300 families, then there is a new state created and there's another 300 families. They're squares. What he was talking about was he saw how we were going to gerrymander all of the elections, how these things would snake through and you'd be able to vote ‑‑ never vote for any ‑‑ vote anybody else out because they could cherry‑pick who was going to vote. He saw that in 1820! But he couldn't get that done and couldn't get that into the Constitution. They wouldn't listen to him. But he said the people that restore it will know. You want to stop gerrymandering? Organize it the way Jefferson and quite honestly the way Moses did. Jefferson knew the answer. We know the answer now. We've made a golden calf. We've seen miracles, miracles in this country. We've changed the world. And Moses went away for a while and so we made a golden calf and we're worshipping it. This is the moment, gang. This is the moment that Moses comes back from the mountain because God's up there and he's like, "Hey, they're screwing around with the golden ‑‑ jeez, these people piss me off." And so what happens? Moses comes back with the tablets and says, what are you doing? Choose sides. Choose sides. Those run up to Moses, "I'm on God's side." And those that don't. And you'll notice that Moses, nor the people on God's side, they didn't pick up arms and destroy the others. They didn't do anything. They're consumed by God. You just have to be standing on the right side. The war, we're battling ‑‑ we're not battling men. We're not battling men here. You don't have to pick up a gun. You don't have to build a bomb. You don't have to do any of that stuff. The war has already been fought and won. Choose sides. The people who are against freedom are not our enemies. They are his.

[NOTE: Transcript may have been edited to enhance readability - audio archive includes full segment as it was originally aired]