The United Kingdom is now arresting over 12,000 people a year for "speech crimes" and is debating doing away with trial by jury for many crimes. Glenn Beck warns that if this can be done in the birthplace of these principles (under the Magna Carta), it can happen to the entire West if we don't END this insanity now!
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: So let me just start here. Because there is -- there is another story that is out in our newsletter today, that talks about how people of college age are freaking out, after Charlie Kirk's death. They don't want anything controversial on campus.
I mean, that's the reason why colleges and universities had protection of free speech, in the first place.
Was to be controversial. To be able to say the things that nobody wants you to say.
And it's really important.
But let me -- let me first remind people of what the Magna Carta is.
It's 1215? The Magna Carta is Latin for the great chart.
Had it not some magnanimous gift from the king.
The king. King John from England. He was -- he was losing a battle. France was just cleaning England's clock.
The baryons and all the lords and the ladies. Said, you know, this king sucks a lot. This king sucks a lot.
And we've got to stop him. Because he's destroying everything.
And he -- he had lost most of the land, to France. And then he started just imposing huge taxes on everybody. And -- and because nobody in the lower class had any -- this all happened with the lords and the ladies. And they were like, enough. Enough. Enough.
You're abusing your royal power.
Well, nobody had ever said that before. That just didn't happen. He had a divine right. He's the king. But in England, they said, no.
You still have to be moral. You have certain laws, and you can't just do these things.
And so what they did, is they got him to agree to the great charter, the Magna Carta. And it placed the king under the law. Before that, the king was the law. So now the king is under the law: It created the principle of due process. Never before did we have that.
You can't be imprisoned, punishment or stripped of property, except by the lawful judgment of your peers or the law of the land. So this creates jury trials. It creates habeas corpus. Protection from arbitrary arrests. All of these things. The government now has to justify itself in a court of law.
That's revolutionary, okay? It also limited taxation without consent. Which we interpreted later as no taxation without representation. Rule of law. Jury trials. Rights of the accused.
Limits on government. Protection of property. Accountability of leaders. All of that comes from the Magna Carta. Okay?
That gave birth, 500 years later, to us and our ideas. Okay?
Now, England, the birthplace of the Magna Carta is now thinking about getting rid of jury trials and arresting more than 12,000 people every year for what they call speech crimes. 12,000!
Now, I want you to think about that.
In Russia, in the same year this stat came out. The latest year that we have, 2023. In 2023, Russia arrested 4,000 people for speech crimes against the Russian military for Ukraine.
4,000 in Russia, 12,000 in England.
The number I saw. We don't have all the numbers. But the number I saw that were arrested for speech crimes in China was 120.
Okay?
Not for violence. Not for theft.
Not for treason.
12,000 in England for words.
Okay. Now, well, that's going on, now the Prime Minister is floating the idea of eliminating, if not most, many jury trials.
It will only be for murder, manslaughter, oh, and something else like that.
Okay?
So, in other words, if you're like, I believe you should be able to read the Bible in your own language, in your own home, Tisdale.
You don't get any hope. You don't get a jury trial. You get the court. You get the king trying you, not a jury of your peers.
This goes against the Magna Carta, the lawful judgment of your peers. Okay?
That's the safeguard that stands between you and an out-of-control state. This is the first and ancient firewall against tyranny. It is what makes England, England.
And if England of all places, tosses that aside, what does the word "free" mean anymore?
Okay? What does it mean? You can't speak, and then you have no jury -- trial of your peers. Wait. What? First of all, understand this: A nation that polices speech is not free!
A nation that dissolves juries is not just unfree, it's prepping for something worse!
Because the entire architecture of the western world, the liberty that we have, rests on a single radical belief.
The truth does not need a king. The truth shall set you free. Who? Is it not what. Who is the truth? Okay.
No king, but Christ. Because Christ is the truth. That's the Western world!
A person's conscience does not need a permit. Speech does not need a bureaucrat's approval before it leaves your lips! That's the West.
That's what built the world. What took it from darkness, to today.
Freedom is not granted we the state. Freedom preexists government.
Government's only legitimate job is to protect it!
Now, here's the dark little secret, that every single tyrant, and every politician knows today. If you control speech, you control thought. If you control thought, you control people.
If you control people, you don't ever have to worry about controlling the government because no one will ever challenge you again!
This is why it is so essential for any side to go, you can't talk to them.
Don't talk to them. Don't listen. Don't question.
You can't hear that. No. They can say whatever they want. But I have a right to refute it. That's why free speech has to be absolute. Not mostly free.
Not free unless it makes Billy over there cry and uncomfortable.
No. I'm sorry, Billy. You don't like it. Refute it.
Freedom that depends on somebody else's freedoms is not freedom!
Freedom that requires government approval is not freedom! Freedom that can be revoked because a bureaucrat doesn't like your tone is not freedom. Once speech becomes conditional, everything become conditional. Your rights, your property, your conscience, your place in society. Because you only live by permission! Never by principle!
We live by principles. Not people!
Who is actually free?
Who is actually free?
The England that once declared the king himself to be subject of law, or the England that now arrests a man because he's posted the wrong meme?
12,000 people!
Can't find one in 2023 that was arrested for that in America. Not one. The England that gave us John Locke, the philosopher of natural rights. Is that person free?
Or the England that now warns citizens that context doesn't matter, if their words cause someone, anyone, emotional harm.
Britain is about loss. But this is not just a British problem. This is the canary in the coal mine for the entire west.
Because these are the people that came up with it. When the mother country forgets its own legacy, jury trials and freedom of speech. When the random that once stared down monarchs now cowers before hashtags and activists and speech tribunals, than somewhere deep inside the Western soul, a light is flickering.
We must remember here, before that same darkness reaches our shores. Because it's already coming on to our beaches. It's already there. There is no such thing as partial liberty. Freedom of speech is the First Amendment for a reason!
It is the guardrail for every other right!
If you lose the First Amendment, you've lost freedom. And if you lose the Second Amendment, you've lost the ability to defend that first freedom.
It's number one for a reason!
You must be allowed to speak, to gather.
To have a free press!
To question your government. You must have those abilities. You must be able to say, especially about government, the worst things about your government! And question them.
And demand answers. To petition them.
That's all in the First Amendment.
It is the pressure valve that prevents so it's from blowing itself up.
The more we contain speech. The more we say, don't talk about. Don't talk about. Can't say that. Can't say that.
The more the pressure builds up. The more likely we blow ourselves up.
It's the mechanism where the powerless can speak to the powerful.
It's the shield that protects dissenters. Unpopular thinkers, prophets, reformers. And, yes, even the offensive.
Look, there are, quote, unquote, historians now who are getting all kinds of bullcrap about Hitler and everything else.
None of that is true. I don't want to silence them. They have a right to say it.
I have a right to say you're wrong! And show you the evidence of what makes them wrong.
That's the way it works. England is about to forget all of this!
They are truly the birthplace of these kinds of ideas, and those ideas led to our idea of real freedom!
No king!
If they forget this, we cannot -- we believe so -- because there won't be anywhere else in the world to go.
The lesson of history, the lesson that history whispers quietly at first. Then louder. And then finally. And we're about at this point, with a scream!
Is that when a state describes which words are allowed, it will eventually decide which thoughts are allowed. Which beliefs are allowed.
Which citizens are allowed.
In the end, in the end, the prisons don't need bars.
The cell will be in your own mind!
Do you understand that, America?
Do your kids understand that?
We don't even know what it means to be free. I thought this weekend, a lot about as opposed to truth shall set you free.
Thought about a lot. In fact, maybe I'll talk to you about it in a minute or so.
Because I don't think people understand what it means to be free.
We think everybody in the world is free. They're not!
And you're about to really find that out!
You want to be tree, or do you want to be safe? Because you cannot have both.
When safety is defined by those who fear your liberty. It's over!
We used to be people who would explore. We were people that crossed the oceans when everyone said we couldn't. We -- we went to space when everyone said, it's impossible. We crossed mountains that no one had ever crossed. We forged -- we forged a nation of really different people. And lived side by side for so long, yes. With bloodshed from time to time. But generally, in ways that nobody had ever done before. Freedom. Freedom is grand. But it's really dangerous. It's messy. Freedom offends you, a lot. Get over it.
Real freedom, real freedom is the only thing that has ever allowed the human spirit to rise above a king. Above a tyrant. Above the mob. Above the bureaucrats. Real freedom that belongs to you. Given to you by God. And that's what they're about to lose in England. The Magna Carta. The simple idea. No man. Not even a king. No man is above the law. Do we have that here?
Do you think no man is above the law? Or do you think there is a class up in the political range, somewhere, that if you're on the right side, don't worry about jail. That's what the Magna Carta tried to stop. That's what we have forgotten even, and they're about to get rid of it entirely.
The modern west is drifting into far more -- far more sinister creed. No man is above offense.
And that is how civilizations fall.



