Glenn Beck and Eric Liu dissect Donald Trump's political maneuvering, analyzing how a potential corporate tax cut from 35% to 15% could secure his coalition while the host critiques Obama's $400,000 speaking fee as evidence of Clinton corruption. They debate power dynamics, with Liu defining it through three laws: concentration, self-justification via narratives like trickle-down economics, and infinite potential for citizen organization against rigged systems. The conversation contrasts Beck's view of progressivism as top-down fascism with Liu's "network localism," ultimately framing the Constitution as an ongoing tension between liberty and equality rather than a settled doctrine. [Automatically generated summary]
The plague that Disney released when they opened up the jar named Science Guy, that Bill Nye plague continues to spread across America.
When are we going to admit the guy's not a scientist?
We want to talk about science deniers.
It's Bill Nye, the science guy.
It's Brittany Spears, man.
He's a Disney manufactured character.
He's essentially Selena Gomez with a lab coat.
Yeah, I mean, it's great.
Don't you dare talk about something that's absolutely.
I believe that's Disney Lab Rats, isn't it?
Yes.
We'll talk about this great song that he put out that is just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
Also, we want to give you an update on North Korea and also Berkeley.
Something that no one will pay attention to, but you will because you've been down this road already.
You are now finally seeing the fascists, the communists, the anarchists, and the Islamists working together to destabilize Europe and the Western world.
It's finally happening.
You can watch it in real time.
Alert the press.
Now, forget that.
They won't pay attention.
We begin there right now.
I will make a stand.
I will raise my voice.
I will hold your hand.
Cause we are one.
I will beat my drum.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Cause we are one.
The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
The book I hold in my hands, I'm reading from it.
The book you hold in your hands has become the principal piece of evidence in an anti-terrorism case in France directed against nine individuals who were arrested November 11th, 2008, mostly in the village of Tarnick.
They have been accused of criminal association for the purposes of terrorist activity on the grounds they were to have participated in the sabotage of overhead electrical lines on France's national railways.
This book is called The Coming Insurrection.
The copy I have doesn't have that disclaimer in it because we started talking about this book before they picked up all of the people that were involved.
This book was to speak to a small, very small faction of people in France that wanted revolution, that wanted communist or fascistic rule.
That number now is at 40%.
When I first started talking about the coming insurrection, we were alone.
It made global headlines.
Glenn Beck pushing little-known book.
The reason why I told you is because this was the beginning of the theory that I later would talk about on Fox that fascists, communists, anarchists, Islamists would work together to destabilize the Middle East, then Europe, and the rest of the world.
I'm really bad at timing, but you're seeing this now beginning to come together in Europe.
And it is coming here.
In fact, it already is.
You know, we talk about the students at Berkeley.
Oh, those students in Berkeley.
Have you seen what the students in Berkeley are doing?
The students in Berkeley.
Have you noticed what the students are doing?
They're burning things down.
The students are getting violent.
Who are these people?
Antifa.
Ever heard of the Antifa movement?
We've seen that.
You've seen it in the newspapers.
You might have heard it talked about.
But do you really know what it is?
Yeah, it's the students at Berkeley.
Berkeley, you know, the bastion of free speech.
You know, as long as you're a leftist.
Can't have Ann Coulter there.
That's why we have to take the, you know, the yogurt shop and set it on fire.
On CBS this morning, they called Berkeley the birthplace of the free speech movement.
It seems like it occurred a little sooner than Berkeley.
Like what, 1930?
1917?
1976.
Oh, yeah, the Woodrow Wilson administration.
1917.
A little prior to that.
Ever so slightly.
The common denominator in both the Milo and the Ann Coulter speech cancellation was the arrival of black-clad, mask-wearing, weapon-carrying thugs, the Antifa movement.
Violence is their protest.
Yeah, vote right.
Those are the Berkeley students.
You know, the ones that want free speech.
You notice that it's Ann Coulter And Milo, who are both nationalists.
Love of your country is great.
Love of your countrymen is great.
That's not what nationalism is.
Nationalism is the hatred for everything else.
Nationalism is an actual term.
It's an actual plan and state of being that turns into a nightmare of bloodshed.
Nationalism isn't love of your country, and don't mistake that.
Nationalism is fascism.
It's just the first phase.
The Antifa movement, Antifa is anti-fascist, anti-fascist.
That's right, they're the Berkeley students.
Well, yeah, it is.
I guess the Berkeley students that put this together, if all the Berkeley students were alive in the 1920s and members of the Communist Party of Germany, yeah, you're right, then they would be the Berkeley students.
Antifa is the group of communists that stood against the fascist in Germany.
Their job was to be a paramilitary force.
Remember the brown shirts?
The brown shirts went after the black shirts.
They were to take the streets and fight and combat the fascists.
They were street fighters meant to bring intimidation to the intimidators.
Their ranks included the communists, the anarchists, and the leftists.
Eventually, the movement was suppressed by the Nazis, but they resurged again in the 70s and the 80s.
And today, their ranks are swelling with active Antifa cells all over the world.
And they like to breed in places like Berkeley.
Yeah, we're an anti-fascist group.
You're a communist, anti-fascist group.
The Berkeley goal for Antifa is to shut down any conservative or capitalist thought.
And they've nearly done it.
Have you seen the videos of the riots on YouTube?
Berkeley looks like a war zone.
Two weeks ago, Antifa crashed a pro-Trump rally, but this time things were a little different.
Militia groups came from all over the country to provide security, and all hell broke loose.
It looked like a riot in Venezuela.
Gee, isn't this what we said would happen?
After losing the battle for Berkeley, ANIFA members hit the forums to talk through what they had done wrong and their solution?
Bring guns next time.
Quote, we need more than flags and bats.
We need to take notes from the John Brown Gun Club and get the firearms and the training.
I know getting firearms in states and cities we have a presence in is usually a hassle, but even handguns would help.
It certainly put a psychological element in while holding back the fascists.
Who do you think is a fascist?
Who do you think the fascists are more afraid of?
People with flags and bats or people with flags, bats, and guns?
End quote.
Berkeley is now considered holy ground for the First Amendment.
It's the launch point for a communist anarchist paramilitary movement.
They're not even fighting fascism anymore.
The world has lost all meaning.
Everything is fascist.
Are you a conservative?
You're a fascist.
You a capitalist?
You're a fascist.
Believe in national borders?
You're a fascist.
Religious?
Clearly, you're a fascist.
These are the same people, the same type of people that wrote the book, The Coming Insurrection.
As if this new movement was ripped right out of the pages of the book.
But boy, oh boy, you talk to anybody in the press about this.
They won't pay attention because they're intellectually dead inside.
There's no curiosity in them anymore.
This book I told you about in 2008 is a book of revolution and it calls for violence.
It actively calls for terrorist activity to end civilization and crash the economy.
Yesterday, I spoke about the worldwide phenomena where radical elements on both sides of the spectrum would work together to bring it all down.
The fascists, the communists, the anarchists, the Islamists would work together to crash and bring the world to its knees.
Over the weekend, we saw 40% of French voters voting for a candidate at the extreme ends of the political spectrum.
That means almost half of the population wants radical left or a radical fascist right government.
And yet, the press doesn't seem so concerned.
The press is celebrating because the globalist, the guy who is lying to the population and saying, no, I'm, no, I'm not a socialist.
No, I don't have anything to do with the, you know, with the other parties, even though I left one of the parties to become the candidate because the parties were freaking out.
So I left the Rothschild Bank, not kidding, not making that up.
I left the Rothschilds and the Socialist Party to run as just a guy like you.
Oh, that's going to work out really well.
Where will they be in five years?
While the press continues this nonsense about the president's first 100 days, why?
Well, because he said it was a big deal.
Oh, let me translate.
He started it.
The world is on fire.
And you are spending all of your time trying to prove Donald Trump wrong.
We've already made up our minds.
We're either for him or against him.
The country has made up their mind.
Why don't we talk about things that we can actually be aware of, plan for, help decide the course?
Like how many Americans know that the entire Senate is going to the White House?
Is it tomorrow?
Tomorrow.
I've never seen this done before in history.
So the president can lay out with a Joint Chief of Staff to Congress exactly what his plan is on North Korea.
We could launch today.
Does anybody really know what that means?
If Donald Trump doesn't deliver on his promises over the next four years, how will his most vocal supporters react?
How will Breitbart treat him just when they let Bannon go?
Will the Democrats continue to slide further and further into the left where they will embrace the Antifa movement in Berkeley?
Because they're practically there now.
If they want votes in this radically changing shift, they may not have any other choice.
How many votes did Bernie Sanders get?
13.2 million?
That's 13 million people who think the United States would be better off as a socialist country.
You look at the latest polls.
It shows almost everybody says we should spend more.
They want bigger government, almost everybody.
And yes, conservatives, that now includes you.
You want a bigger government.
You want to spend more money on programs.
We're $20 trillion in debt.
But it doesn't seem to matter if the Democrats don't move further to the left and the Trump fails on his promises.
Will the coming insurrection happen sooner than we think?
Will the black-clad, mask-wearing, weapon-toning, antifa thugs run in our streets?
Churchill's War Bluff00:15:32
The signs are here and it's being birthed in Berkeley.
And you know what?
I don't really, I mean, I'm to the point.
I don't, we get what we deserve.
You know, you listen to this stuff.
My job is to bring this stuff to you so you can be prepared.
You can know what time it is.
You can see this storm approach.
But after I do my homework and I tell you about it, I'm just like you.
I'm not going to pay attention to that.
I'm glad I know it and I'm going to move on with my life because there's nothing I can do about it anyway.
That's not a healthy attitude.
That doesn't solve it.
What solves it is standing against this tide and not going over the cliff with the rest of humanity.
And boy, I feel like you do today, I think.
I'm just watching it go over cliff.
Huh?
I'm just tired of saying, hey, don't go there.
Huh, there goes another one off the cliff.
Hey, honey, do we have any chips or anything?
Do you have any chips?
I mean, are you that you should bring that up because you had chips?
No, I was just asking.
Okay.
If I had any chips.
You're listening to the Glenn Beck program.
The Glenn Beck Program.
I will beat my drum.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Cause we have one Mercury.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
I'm in one of those moods today.
Anything could happen.
In one of those moods.
Great.
Yeah.
You love those.
Oh, I love these moods.
It always leads to good things.
No, it usually doesn't.
Oh, really?
I hadn't noticed.
Yeah, you should.
Pat, I wanted to ask you now that they have confirmed that this meeting of all 100 senators At the White House is about a meeting with the Joint Chiefs on North Korea.
Have you ever seen that happen before in history?
Not that I can remember.
No, I think it's I heard unprecedented many times tied to it.
However, they said that it was McConnell who called it, and they're just having it at the White House.
So it's not a Trump, it wasn't Trump that called it, it was McConnell who called it.
They're just housing it at the White House for some reason.
Bizarre.
But it is unprecedented, and I think we need to talk about North Korea.
It's now about 9:30 or 10:30 at night in North Korea.
We'll talk about that next.
You're listening to the Glenn Beck program.
Mercury.
The Glenn Beck Program.
Hello, America.
Welcome to the program.
Glad you're here.
So we're just trying to figure out where, you know, maybe, maybe, possibly this is a bluff when it comes to North Korea.
I'm not really sure.
Today is the 85th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean Army.
It's Armed Forces Day.
Yay!
Yeah.
And it's a significant date inside of North Korea.
Usually coincides with a weapons test and military drills.
The nuclear weapons test that they said was going to happen today didn't happen.
It is now 10:05 their time.
And yes, I understand that it is, it should be 10:35, but they also, not only is it the year 105 in North Korea, they also just shave a half hour off the clock.
They're just like, whatever.
We want the extra sleep.
You know.
So anyway, so anyway, they were supposed to have this weapons test today.
It didn't happen.
Yesterday, news broke that the entire Senate from the U.S. had been called to the White House for a briefing specifically on North Korea.
All of the senators will be there.
They'll get a detailed briefing by the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Director of the National Intelligence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
This is about as high level of a meeting as you can get.
I don't think I've, I've never seen this before.
So now, is this showmanship?
Is this showmanship to intimidate both China and North Korea?
Because remember, Sunday night, the president, and they have not disclosed what this conversation was about, but the president called both the prime minister of Japan and the president of China.
And after that phone conversation, the president of China issued a statement that said they don't believe in unilateral strikes, and the UN must be consulted before any strike happens in North Korea.
So was the president preparing China and Japan that a strike is coming?
We have the carrier groups out there.
We also just landed 1,000 Marines off the coast of Australia.
Mike Pence cut his trip short by a day to come back so he could be in Washington, D.C. today.
Are 1,000 Marines enough to tip over and capsize the island of Australia?
Not Australia.
Good.
Not Australia.
That's too big.
Guam, yes.
But not Australia.
But not Australia.
All right.
Okay, so Trump said the status quo in North Korea is unacceptable.
You know who agrees with that?
North Koreans.
That's for sure.
The council must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
It's a real threat to the world.
Whether we want to talk about it or not, North Korea is a big world problem, and it's a problem that we have to finally solve.
People put blindfolds on for decades, and now it's time to solve the problem.
Now, I have heard that the Obama administration knew that this was a problem, a big problem, but did nothing, just wanted to pass it on to the next president.
No.
No.
I won't hear of that.
President Obama would have handed it head on.
Oh, yeah, he was a man of action, wasn't he?
Man of action.
Oh, Trump wants the council to believe that sanctions are the bare minimum that he'll accept.
And if they don't agree, he's going to use the United States military.
That's why I think he's calling 100 of the senators to the White House.
It's an elaborate bluff, I'm hoping.
Their sole intention, I'm hoping, is to brief them on North Korea, but also send a strong message to the world.
We will do it.
We are watching the Cuban missile crisis.
People don't understand this because the press is so focused on the first hundred days, the first hundred days.
See, he was wrong.
See, he was wrong.
See, see, we were right.
He was wrong.
We're right.
He's wrong.
That's all they're doing.
We're watching the Cuban missile crisis unfold in front of us, and nobody in this country has a freaking clue.
Now, it's either a bluff or this is a legitimate meeting to discuss the president's authority to go to war.
But this is not an intelligence update.
He'd need some congressmen with him, too, if he's going to talk about going to war because he's got to get all of Congress, not just the Senate.
Well, I will tell you this.
No matter what this is, here's what you need to know today.
If we have to take care of North Korea, what you're looking at is a scale of warfare not seen since World War II.
This is what we believe it will look like opening up this can of worms.
Our primary objective would be to neutralize their nuclear threat.
So let's assume for a second that we have perfect intelligence.
If North Korea detects a preemptive strike, they could fire off a nuke at Seoul or Japan.
Our first wave of our strike would be B-2 bombers hitting North Korean nuclear sites and suspected launch areas.
That would be followed by a massive cruise missile strike from the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier in this battle group.
North Korea's retaliation would be instant.
And what they would most likely do is a massive artillery barrage that would open up on South Korea.
A few hours ago, North Korea celebrated their Armed Forces Day, not with a nuclear test, but with 400 artillery pieces.
They're reminding us in Seoul what retaliation will look like.
Seoul could be completely leveled with conventional weapons within two hours.
The loss of life will be in the millions in two hours with conventional weapons.
North Korea has extensive surface-to-air missile defenses.
These missiles can engage our bombers up to 200 miles away.
We'd be bogged down for hours trying to knock them out.
And during that time, artillery will continue to rain down on South Korea.
A strike on the USS Carl Vinson would probably take place during this time as well.
General Mattis would have a choice to make here.
The loss of Seoul is completely unacceptable.
Would he be forced to risk it and send B-2 bombers to drop massive payloads on North Korea's artillery assets?
Probably.
The loss of our pilots would be unavoidable.
And the casualties will be unacceptable in current world standards.
At this point, the North Koreans would activate their sleeper cells in the South to carry out guerrilla attacks and to kidnap U.S. citizens.
While that's being dealt with, a joint U.S. and South Korean evasion would happen across the DMZ.
That would be imminent.
A ground assault on the area that has been fortified for over half a century.
This happens if it would start tonight, today.
All of this would happen by Thursday or Friday.
There are no good options if we go to war with Kim Jong-un.
Let's hope that this bluff, that it is a bluff, and that it works.
Why don't we bomb the parade where they've got the 400 pieces?
You just bomb the parade.
Take out all 400 pieces right there.
Did you see the pictures of what?
Did you see the picture of the last parade with the missiles?
Yeah.
Did you see the nose cones?
Yeah.
Where they were fake?
Yeah.
I mean, they looked like cardboard.
They had all this artillery and they had the big missiles.
And one of the nose cones was on like sideways.
It was kind of blowing in the wind.
I mean, like, that's the one.
I think that's a cardboard missile.
I don't think that's even real.
They might have been thinking we were going to bomb the parade.
Yeah.
It would be a good place to start.
I mean, and we have a pretty big target.
The people are all standing there with those little cards that, you know, spell out Kim Jong-un.
I mean, it's like a giant X in the sky.
You're like, just hit that big mile-long red square there that keeps moving.
Just hopefully they don't think about that in advance and change the cards to say don't bomb here.
Right.
Then a big arrow that says that way.
That way towards America.
Then we might bomb ourselves.
That would be terrible.
Terrible.
The other thing I don't understand we haven't done is to get this University of Virginia student out of there.
Remember the guy who took one of the posters?
They were on some trip with his singing group or something.
And he saw this propaganda poster and he just took it down because he wanted a souvenir.
He's in a labor camp right now.
I mean, they don't know if he's alive or dead.
He could very well be dead by now.
And he's certainly not going to make it through this if this continues to escalate.
No, that's for sure.
23 years old.
Even read their, you know, their propaganda piece against the United States, trying to get out of this jam, and they still put him in a labor camp.
I mean, this is not a military guy.
He's not a spy.
He's a student who just for fun took down a propaganda piece that he wanted a souvenir for.
Can you guys give me one Winston Churchill in the world today?
Just give me one.
One Winston Churchill?
Somebody who is a world leader that has real power and real pulpit that could say we have to mobilize the rest of the world.
It was Winston Churchill that did it.
It was not FDR.
It wasn't anybody else.
It was Winston Churchill.
I'm convinced without Winston Churchill, we would all be speaking German.
Can you tell me who the Winston Churchill is?
I mean, this is the opposite of what happened in the 1930s.
We had all of these bad guys rising up.
I mean, look at Le Pen.
Okay, Franco.
The bad guys all throughout Europe that are starting to rise up.
Those are all just Franco and Hitler, Putin, Stalin.
I mean, it's the same thing happening, except in England.
Do they have anybody in England?
Do we have anybody here?
I mean, Donald Trump is probably the best.
And he's a guy who just admittedly said to the AP, I didn't know anything about NATO.
Yeah, that's why he said it was obsolete.
Right.
I said it was obsolete because I didn't know.
Trump and NATO Obsolete00:05:17
Good God Almighty.
He's our commander-in-chief.
I mean, maybe it's somebody like Mattis, you know, where you have a guy.
He doesn't have a pulpit, though, but maybe.
I mean, in those moments, he gets it, right?
I mean, and he's certainly, he's one of the guys who's going to be briefing everybody on North Korea in the Senate today.
So, I mean, he might be that type of guy.
I mean, there are certainly real military brains surrounding this president.
Yes.
Thank God.
Yeah.
Thank God.
Probably the closest one would be Netanyahu.
That's the only one I can think of.
But I mean, you know, Israel's not rallying the world around something.
They can't either rally the world up there.
Hey, don't kill us all.
Yeah, they can't get anybody to stop killing them.
Hey, do you guys mind not firing missiles at us every day at Sabaro?
No, we cannot go along with you on that.
I'm sorry, Benjamin.
That is essentially.
I mean, I don't think that's going to happen.
But you're right.
He's probably the strongest one on seeing things.
We got to hope that this 10 years that we have had as Tea Party people, that these 10 years, those 10-year-olds that we were raising 10 years ago are strong enough and are going to be the future leaders, that there's enough of them out there.
I mean, I guess you can hope for that.
I think you probably need to take more pragmatic steps, though, in the near term, which something like, you know, if you have an aircraft carrier, you pull it off the shores of North Korea and you have Bill Nye and Rachel Blooms just perform constantly that stupid sex song and broadcast into North Korea.
They might just devour next hour Bill Nye and my vagina has a voice.
You don't want to miss that.
You think Kim Jong-un's making it through that?
No.
I mean, maybe the first play.
And if we have, he still hasn't, you know, he still has a regime, but after that, he's given up.
Have time when we come back, Kim Jong's life set to music.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
Mercury: the Glenn Beck Program.
All right.
Do you have the Bill O'Reilly audio?
The Bill O'Reilly audio from last night.
He was basically saying, You're going to be shaken when you hear.
He said, I don't think you'll be surprised, but you'll be shaken when you hear the truth about what all of this was.
He said, I was disappointed that this happened and I'm off of television.
I didn't expect it, didn't see that one coming.
He said, but basically watch this space.
There's going to be some more information.
So there's a lot going on that we don't know about.
Yeah, these situations are impossible to talk about because he can't really say anything for a million reasons, but everyone wants to be.
It's so horrible.
You know, the court case.
You can't defend yourself.
When there's a court case, you just cannot defend yourself.
Yeah.
Really bad.
All right.
We've got a couple of great hours for you.
We're going to talk a little bit about the denying of science and the miracle birth of Kim Jong-un is also coming up.
And you're much more powerful than you think.
Special guest Eric Liu is going to be joining us.
That's in hour number three, a fascinating conversation.
Hour three.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury. The Blaze Radio Network.
On demand.
Hey, what was this weird shot that Donald Trump took at Nikki Haley?
Did you see this?
Yeah.
You don't know.
It seemed like he was kind of joking, but a lot of times the Trump stuff jokes are usually lead to something.
He just kind of said something like, ah, she's doing a great job, isn't she?
I mean, if she's not, we're going to get rid of her.
But she's doing a great job.
She's doing a great job.
Seriously.
Seriously.
She's doing a great job.
It's like, why?
What?
What does that mean?
And she's been universally praised so far.
She's been a superstar.
She's been an athlete.
That could be an issue.
Right.
A lot of times that's not good.
Sometimes it is.
Well, I don't think she's getting, I mean, I don't think, you know, she's not a household name.
I don't hear everybody say, have you seen our new UN ambassador?
But in Washington, in media circles, they are saying her name quite a bit.
And sometimes it has an effect.
We want to talk a little bit also about the latest evidence that Russian hackers are targeting Europe's election.
The same Russian hackers that breached the email servers of the DNC are now focusing their attention on European elections.
And we have the craziest, we have the craziest proof that the Russians and the former East Germans are actively involved in trying to sway public opinion in America.
Netflix Science Segment00:14:06
The good thing is they're not very good at it.
We'll give you that.
Also, Bill Nye, the science guy, right now.
I will make a stand.
I will raise my voice.
I will hold your hand.
Cause we are one.
I will beat my drum.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Cause we are one.
The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
So there was this pro-science march, which I don't even, I really don't understand.
This is how far logic and reason have left the building.
There's none left in the country.
Did you see what they were rallying for for this pro-science march?
Nothing to do with science.
Yeah, nothing to do with science.
Okay.
So what they were rallying for is that this government is anti-science and that they are cutting spending on science, which is not true.
They are cutting the increase on the spending on science.
Okay.
So they're not going to get as much as they were.
But they are talking about this anti-science mentality and how the government must provide science.
You know, I don't have a problem with the government involved in some science.
You know, DARPA has been really, really good.
However, could we just take a minute here?
Science is only standing up and saying we need more funding from the government because they want the government grants.
And what does the government grant do to the average scientist?
The average scientist will get the government grant because they know what the government is looking for.
And so they'll follow that rabbit down the hole.
For instance, climate change.
But by science getting into bed with the government at this point, the government is the church.
We have started to worship our federal government.
Government is God.
Government issues rights.
Government tells you how to live.
Government tells you exactly what to do and what not to do.
Here are these anti-Galileans asking to be locked in the tower.
It is really crazy what they're doing.
And they're all led by the Disney cartoon of a scientist, Bill Nye the Science Guy.
That's not a scientist at all.
He is an engineer.
He's not a scientist.
They just named the show Bill Nye the Science Guy because it rhymed.
Right.
Well, and also you can't say Bill Nye the Scientist because it would be not inaccurate.
So science guy, everybody thought, oh, well, he's a scientist then.
No.
And he's just comfortable being with, you know, talking the language of the people.
He's just a science guy.
No, it was because he wasn't a scientist.
He's a scientist.
You know who Bill Nye the Science Guy is?
He's the question mark man that we grew up with.
When I was younger, he was the question mark guy.
Matthew Lesko?
Yes, and I yeah, that's who he is.
I think that's a slam on Matthew.
Oh, totally.
Oh, yeah, totally.
And my apologies to the question mark guy.
But he was the guy who was like, hey, how can you get money to start your own business?
The government's got grants.
Write to me in Colorado.
I remember Jeffrey's retirement plan.
I love that.
Legitimately getting grants from the government for return.
That's who he is.
Can you imagine listening to that guy for our science?
No.
No.
He's the question mark guy.
Bill Nye is a Disney cartoon.
He is as credible as the Disney lab rats talking to you about how to cure cancer.
He's a Disney product.
It's Britney Spears in a lab coat.
Scratch that.
There would be something appealing about Britney Spears in a lab coat.
It's more like Hannah Montana in a lab coat.
Yes.
And it's interesting.
Somebody pointed out that, you know, this generation is formed by the idea that they all grew up watching Bill Nye the Science Guy as a children's show, and now they're all adults and they forgot that it was a children's show.
Right.
Like it was a show aimed at children.
It was intentionally boiling down things.
This is true experts.
If this is what we need, then, hey, kids, it's me, Barney.
Today we've got a Bob North Korea.
Would we have a Barney character tell us about anything?
No.
Well, Mr. Rogers did do a Cold War special, which we found.
He did do a special on the Cold War and again asked for education funding as part of it, which was a bizarre story where there were lost episodes and it leaked out onto YouTube recently.
Well, here's an episode that I would really like to lose because once you, and we're not, luckily it's radio, so you're not going to be able to see this.
But as you're listening to it, realize it is 100 times worse when you actually are watching it.
This actually happened on a Netflix original show.
This is something that we feel necessary to say this action in today's world.
It already happened.
Think of this in today's world where, honestly, space aliens could, Anderson Cooper could go on TV tonight and lift up his eyelid and pull it over his head and reveal himself as an alien.
And we'd be like, huh, in this atmosphere, we have to say this actually happened.
I mean, in all seriousness, it's one of the worst three minutes of entertainment ever put together.
And by the way, we've got like five of the top 10.
So we know this.
We know that this is a good thing.
We have all of the.
Yeah, we are Lifetime Achievement Award winners when it comes to bad entertainment.
Yes, this is the worst thing.
I may have ever seen.
Have you ever seen?
I didn't even know he had a Netflix show called Bill Nye Saves the World.
Who knew?
And why the hell did Netflix put him on?
What is the draw of this guy?
I don't understand it.
Okay, so here's Bill Nye, the science guy, and he's going to introduce somebody that you, of course, know.
And warning, kids, warning, if you have kids in the room, you might, this has a dicey language in it, and it's all technical science language.
But the song is, remember, and we're the science denier.
We're the ones denying science.
This is on the science stage this weekend.
My vagina has a voice.
So, you guys, seriously, this next thing I feel is very special.
This is a cool little segment.
You know this woman from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
Please give it up for Rachel Woo.
I don't even know how Rachel.
I don't know her.
Bipeds who identify as TADA.
Okay, for all the bipeds who identify as ladies.
Because that's as close as we could come to calling you something that sort of identifies a human being.
Right.
So, so wait, that's what she said?
For all of you bipeds that identify as ladies.
Okay.
All right.
But we're the science tonight.
This world of ours is full of choice, but must I choose between only John or Joyce?
All my options only.
Harder boys, my vagina has its own voice.
Not vocal voice, a metaphorical voice.
Sometimes I do a voice for my vagina.
Please don't tell me I'm going to do it on your day zone.
I think the hang on stopped.
I believe that laughter is piped in.
Oh, it had to be.
I believe that laughter.
Because they didn't mic the crowd.
I don't know if there even is one.
I thought there was a live audience, yeah.
I mean, he seems to be talking to them at the beginning.
Hey, everybody.
Now, this is going to be, it seems like it's a variety show.
Yeah.
Is he talking to us at home, though?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I've never seen it either.
Oh, oh, oh!
Much more!
So bad.
Or a top-off.
Versatile love may have some butt stuff.
It's evolution ain't nothing new.
Wow.
There's nothing taboo about sex too.
Just add salt or dirage parties.
French treasure.
Cause my sex joke is so oh oh oh much more than either oh oh oh if they're alive I'll date them channing or genitate them.
I'm down for anything.
Don't box in my box.
Give someone new a handy and give yourself props.
Oh, you think you're so smart.
Did you learn gay in college?
Wow.
I can't believe this happened.
I mean, this is.
Has there been anything worse ever broadcast?
Ever?
Ever.
I don't think so.
Listen to the message.
It's science, Glenn.
I know.
My vagina has a voice.
Hey, how are you?
I'm Bill.
Bill the vagina.
Yesterday I was Carol.
Today I'm Bill the Vagina.
Taking your calls now, hello.
I'm listening.
Go ahead.
Yes, Peter, come in a little closer.
What were you saying?
I mean, geez.
And we're the science.
Is that the voice she does?
How are you doing?
Give us a.
Whoa.
Let me tell you something.
That is really.
I was vomiting out a child the other day.
Oh, my God.
Split my face wide open.
Okay.
This is right.
The issue here is if your vagina could talk, this is what it'd be saying.
Okay.
I think maybe it should stop talking.
Yeah, no, I was thinking maybe that was the good.
But like, honestly.
Why aren't you ashamed of me?
Yes.
We are ashamed of you.
Yes.
Very ashamed of you.
And again, now we've broken the record of Bill Dye for the worst moment in broadcast history, which is I'm glad you reclaimed the title.
It's interesting because a lot of people are offended over the content and the message of that, which, you know, it's like she's saying, what was it, you know, basically saying I can't be assigned to sex.
Yeah.
But really, science.
And that's science.
But really, like, I'm much more offended at how terrible it is.
It's like, I don't, they could be saying anything.
And I don't think it would overcome just how awful a production it is.
No, it's unbelievably bad.
Horrific.
What could they possibly have been thinking?
You're still freaking out that my vagina has a voice.
No, I know.
But my butthole has a stink beyond your wildest imagination.
You've set the record already.
You don't need to further it.
This is like.
Whoa.
Whoa.
This is like you already scored 101 points.
You don't need to go for 130.
Wilt.
It's like, calm down.
Wow.
That is absolutely unbelievable, though.
I mean, seriously, how, in good conscience, as a person who works in the entertainment industry, how could you let that on the air?
That's you light fire to the tapes before they let you get into Netflix.
Here's the thing.
Netflix has spent a lot of money on that.
There's nobody at Netflix that goes, yeah.
Well, my head has a mouth and my mouth has a voice.
You're fired.
Get out.
Well, I mean, I think the point with Netflix is, you know, it's not like they're broadcasting.
This is the benefit of Netflix.
They could put a bunch of crap on there, too.
They've got a lot of great shows.
But doesn't some shareholder go, come on.
And they might.
No, it's right.
They might.
I mean, this is one season.
But this doesn't cancel your, no one cancels a subscription over this, do they?
There's so many other great shows.
And so maybe it brings in some crazy nutjob liberal that subscribes and thinks it's good.
I mean, maybe, maybe Bill Nye's, someone in Bill Nye's family.
But here's the problem.
Subscribes because of this.
Here's the problem.
This is why, I mean, are you seeing anybody who was conservative, crazy, you know, doing a show like that on?
Thank God.
No, I know that.
But they'll put anything on as long as it's liberal.
As long as it's liberal, progressive, doesn't matter.
I mean, you know, the idea that the left has gone over after Fox News, you're only thinning the herd by making conservative views a pariah.
What you do is you only allow the strongest or the craziest to stand.
And so we have, we'll stand.
I'm telling you, we're going to continue to stand.
Even if I have to do it under a tree, I'm going to be doing, I'm going to be saying my view under a tree if it's only with three people.
Standing Under a Tree00:03:36
That's okay.
I'm not, you're not shutting me up.
But the ones who last, after you clear out all, if you make it uncomfortable for the normal people to say something, the only ones that are left are the truly dedicated or the nut jobs that will just get some other nut job to pay for it.
Well, that, and of course, obviously all the vaginas with voices that will always speak out.
They're always there to speak out to America.
My vagina has a voice, but conservatives don't.
We should write a song.
My vagina has a voice, but conservatives don't.
Okay.
May have just broken the V-word record all time, too, right here.
No, no, I don't believe so.
It's possible.
It's again in a science discussion.
These things are allowed.
You're listening to the Glenn Beck Program.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Has Caitlin Jenner had the sex reassignment surgery yet?
I read that she had.
So, I mean, it's official.
That is a commitment.
Yeah, that and man, I just want, I just want her to have happiness.
You know what I mean?
So she's at peace now.
Really?
Yeah.
Because that's usually not what happens.
Yeah.
And I hope that is true.
Yeah.
I saw a clip of her last night with Tucker Carlson.
And she said that she would rather try to soften the conservatives on their, you know, gay and lesbians stance than trying to convince the Democrats of tax cuts.
Yeah.
You watched that clip.
Yeah.
Did you think of Norton?
Yes.
Jim Norton.
Jim Norton.
Yes, I did.
Jim Norton.
Yes, I did.
Jim Norton said, okay, I'm just going to say it.
I'm just going to say it.
Everybody says that, oh, Caitlin's so beautiful.
She's not.
And I will tell you, last night was not her best night.
No, not her best.
It shouldn't be a prerequisite that everybody thinks the same way about a person's attractiveness, right?
Do we all have to think the same way?
I thought there was supposed to be diversity.
I thought diversity was worshipped in this country.
Well, you can think she's beautiful, and I'll think not so much.
Not so much, right?
Not so much.
So that's part of the issue.
That's inclusion.
Because now it has become this even happened with what's her face, Lena Dunham.
Someone in the audience said, why aren't we always seeing you naked on the show?
I mean, I really don't want to see that.
And that was like, oh, how dare you not want to see me naked?
How dare you?
Is that because I'm not perfect?
This is not because I'm not what you desire.
Well, yeah, pretty much.
It is because of that.
Kind of terrible.
Yeah, sorry.
And then this myself.
But that's now a measure of hatred.
Will conform.
Like the will conform.
Yeah.
We'll be able to explain it to you.
No, please.
No, no, no.
I've got a voice.
Oh, no.
I finally have a voice.
Please.
Let me explain how we work.
We're all out of time.
We're all out of time.
Beck Program, VQA.
The Glenn Beck.
Hey, do you see this?
Border Wall Hypocrisy00:11:10
Barack Obama has just given his first paid speaking gig or is about to at Cantor Fitzgerald Healthcare Conference this September.
Surely he did that.
He's going to do it for free and donate all the proceeds that he would have gotten to some really worthy charity for feeding children.
No, he's limited.
You know what?
He's earned his money.
He's spent his time serving.
Right.
So we got to get him a chance to make some money.
That's right.
So he's going to give this hour-long speech, and he's only charging $400,000.
Is that all?
That's all.
Now, he could have charged a million, but he didn't.
But he didn't.
He charged 40% of that.
That's huge.
What a magnanimous gesture.
Remember when $200,000?
Remember when Hillary Clinton got in trouble for $250,000 for speaking to who?
Who?
Oh, I remember the Wall Street crowd.
All right.
He's talking to Cantor Fitzgerald's health care department.
So it's Wall Street Health Care.
Jeez.
$400,000.
$100,000.
I'm telling you, I don't know how we just don't eat each other.
When the hypocrisy becomes clear, you know, I said this yesterday.
The Clintons are done.
The Clintons are done.
I mean, I know people who really like the Clintons and supported the Clintons, who now look at Hillary Clinton in particular and they're like, I'm so done with her.
Yeah.
She is nothing but corrupt.
And so they're just done.
Well, you knew that when you got in.
They knew that all along.
I mean, I know they're done now, but I'm just saying they knew it all along.
But they denied and wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt.
It's, you know, we all are like that.
And we have to admit it.
We all are like that.
We give people we want to believe, this cognizance dissidence, where we want to give people we like the benefit of the doubt.
But you can only do it so long before there's a crack.
And the crack with the Clintons has come.
And it's going to come with Obama.
And it's going to come with Donald Trump, too.
I mean, right now, Donald Trump, you know, in this 100-day thing, you know, why are supporters still supporting him?
Well, look at the way the question was worded.
First of all, the question was worded, would you vote for him again?
If you had to do it all over again, would you vote for him again?
Yes, because my choice was Hillary Clinton.
So yes.
And the same thing would be said with Hillary, now that you've seen how bad Hillary Clinton really messed it up, would you vote for her again?
Yes, because it's Donald Trump.
So the question is meaningless at this point.
The second thing that Donald Trump has really mastered is he is everything to everybody with his supporters.
Look at what he's doing with healthcare.
He actually went on the road and promised to half of his supporters, I'm going to repeal, we're going back to medicine the way America does medicine.
The other half, he promised, I'm going to give you more.
I'm going to give you more health care.
In fact, I'm going to have government-run healthcare, single-payer system.
We pay for all of it.
So right now in the 100 days where he hasn't proposed or gotten anything through, the press is looking at this and saying, how come they're sticking with him?
Because they believe he's still fighting for them.
The more information that he actually puts down on the table, notice what happened?
When he actually went after the healthcare, what happened?
His coalition started to crack.
So what did he do?
Nothing.
Don't propose anything.
You watch.
With this tax thing that he's going to release tomorrow, if it is a really substantial tax reduction and it's big thinking, his people will be behind him.
If it's wishy-washy, nope.
Well, they're saying now that they don't think they'll actually attempt a tax reform plan.
They will instead attempt to do a tax cut, which is different because the tax cut only will need to get to 51 votes.
So what they're planning on attempting here is essentially what Bush got done, which expires in 10 years.
Oh, my gosh.
Now, look, I'll rather, if I could rather have that, I'm fully, I'm on board.
And they're talking about cutting the corporate rate from 35 to 15 as part of his plan, which would be huge.
It would be legitimately beneficial to the country if that can happen.
And you got to believe that most Republicans would get on board for that.
Most Democrats won't.
And all Democrats won't.
I don't think there's a chance of getting any Democrats' votes.
Maybe you get Mansion, which at this point in West Virginia, I think he's almost a Republican because he knows he can't really vote against Donald Trump and win a seat.
But I mean, you look at that, and that would be interesting.
In 10 years, you know, that's good.
But it would not be the full reform that obviously they were talking about initially.
So the more he does, the more he'll define himself by his actual enacted policies.
So this 100 days of him not actually doing anything actually works to his advantage.
Well, he says he's done more than anybody ever has.
But he's done it on executive orders.
Walk me through this move, Glenn, as a strategist.
Yes.
He comes out and the budget's about to potentially go through another continuing resolution.
It's not really a budget.
And it gets you a few more months of paying for the government so it doesn't shut down, right?
The quote-unquote shutdown.
So they're in the middle of doing this.
It looks like it's going to go through without a hitch.
And then Trump and his administration starts leaking that they will not approve this.
They will not go along with this without the border wall funding.
So then that turns into a big story.
Now we might have a government shutdown.
Democrats don't want it.
Some Republicans don't want the border wall.
We're not going to give you that $1.4 billion.
No, It gets this big thing.
It blows up into this big issue.
And everyone's talking about a government shutdown all of a sudden.
And then today he announces, actually, I don't need the border wall funding anymore.
I'm willing to back off on that to get this done.
Now, if you were willing to back off on it, why would you make a big deal out of it and turn this news cycle into a giant conversation about government shutdown, which everywhere it's reported on both left and right, both good and bad, it's Trump's doing, right?
Like he wanted the funding and he was the one pushing for it.
And then as soon as there's any pushback, you just back off of it and then get nothing out of it anyway.
There are those people that truly believe at least they're talking about me.
Yeah, and I was wondering, is that it?
It could be.
I don't know.
Is it just, you know what?
He can now say he tried to get the border wall and, oh, well, couldn't get it done.
Because now they're saying they won't get border wall funding until next year, which, by the way, is an election year.
So if you think that the border wall is going to be easier to fund during an election year, good luck with that.
You're going to have to fight all over again.
You're going to have to have this fight of you're a racist all over again.
And as we said, they're never going to build it.
They never had any intention of building it.
It's just not going to get done.
I really want to have a conversation.
Anderson Cooper said last week when I told the story, and I think I said this yesterday, when I told the story about George Bush saying, don't worry, whoever's in the office is going to do pretty much exactly what I've done.
Well, Obama did that.
And now Trump is doing that.
So I really think as a country, we need to have the discussion.
Who's really running this place?
Who's really running this?
You know, that's the question that France is asking.
Who's really running this?
And unless you can get in and actually make and listen to the people, they don't understand.
The media is so stupid.
They don't understand that what the people are saying on nationalism, it's not a raw, raw, raw, I want everybody else to die.
It's more of like Texas.
The reason why I used to love the Texas attitude, and I say used to, because it's not here as much anymore.
But back when I lived here in the 80s and the 90s, Texans had this attitude, they love Texas.
And people would, they'd say all the time, oh man, I hear Massachusetts is great.
It's not Texas, but I hear it's great.
They'd say that all the time.
And they meant it.
Oh, I hear California.
I hear parts of California are great.
Yeah, sounds beautiful.
It's not Texas.
Have you ever been to wherever?
So they had this appreciation for everything else, but they had a love for Texas.
And I think that's the way that people want to feel about their country.
They don't want to hate everything else.
They want to love their town.
They want to love their team.
They want to love their state.
They want to love their country.
But if you use Europe, you're not allowed to love Italy and be proudly Italian.
You're not allowed to be proudly German.
You're a racist.
You're a xenophobe.
No.
I like my culture, just like the people in the Middle East like their culture.
I like my culture.
My culture has value.
And because no one is listening to this and we're all being made into exactly the same thing, you're going to have diversity of thought here.
And I'm going to tell you exactly what you're going to like and don't like.
And if you say anything different, then you are that racist xenophobe.
There's no diversity of thought there.
Cultural Value Clash00:02:53
And until we address that, until we actually have that conversation, we're going to be looking for somebody more and more extreme to break the system.
If Donald Trump can't get these things done, Everybody said last time, I just, you know what?
I just want to burn the whole system down.
It's not functioning.
It's not listening.
It's not functioning.
If Donald Trump becomes the system, those people who last time said, I want it to burn down, how many will join them?
And how many will join them going, you know what?
Donald Trump couldn't get it done.
I want some, this guy will get it done.
You just go more and more extreme.
We have to have real conversations about the real problems without all of this political correct nonsense.
I am willing, an example earlier, I am willing to call Bruce Jenner Caitlin Jenner.
I'm willing to, not only willing, I find it impossible not to have empathy for him his entire life and her for what she's going through.
She's had the sex change operation.
I'm willing to call her her.
I'm not willing to say, oh my gosh, isn't she beautiful?
I mean, that should be fair.
It should be fair.
If transgendered people are equal to us, which we believe they are, then some of them are going to be probably pretty ugly.
Yeah.
Just because they're beautiful.
There's some heterosexuals that are pretty freaking ugly.
Not only that, let's stop denying science.
A woman with a penis is not a woman, right?
No matter how you feel.
That's called a man.
No matter how you feel.
You can identify with anything you want, but that doesn't change your physiology.
I mean, you can look at some of the worst people in the world.
Mao.
I really feel this.
I really feel like this idea on farming is going to work.
Oh, it didn't.
Yeah, but I feel it's going to work this year.
Well, it didn't.
It's also like the 1984, two plus two equals five.
Yes.
We're supposed to believe.
Isn't that what this transgender thing really is?
Two plus two equals five.
No, it doesn't.
A woman with a penis does not equal a woman.
That's a man.
It's a man.
We don't even have to get there.
We just have to do.
Look at what we're dealing with.
We got to get back to the basics.
We just have to get back to the basics.
We're going to try to do that next hour.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Two Plus Two Equals Five00:02:34
Mercury.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
I'm so glad you're here.
Pray for a very peaceful night.
It's nighttime now.
It's 11.30, almost midnight now in North Korea.
Pray for a peaceful night.
We have the Senate going to the White House tomorrow to be briefed on North Korea.
Never seen that happen before.
And we just need a peaceful resolution to this because this is World War III style problems if we don't pray for our country, pray for our leaders, and pray that we all take a deep breath.
Glenn Beck.
Mercury. The Blaze Radio Network.
On demand.
Hello, America.
Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program.
This hour, you're more powerful than you think.
What does that really mean to you?
The entire world is convincing you that you are powerless.
And we believe a lie in many regards about power.
What we think of as power is truly the exact opposite of true power.
We'll show you a way to reconnect and short-circuit the old thinking and create new thinking beginning right now.
I will make a stand.
I will raise my voice.
I will hold your hand.
Cause we have won.
I will be my drum.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Cause we are one.
The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Three Laws of Power00:14:59
Eric Liu is a new friend.
We started to get to know each other maybe two months ago.
He came down from his hometown of Seattle, which is also my hometown.
He is the CEO of Citizenship University.
He teaches civics at the University of Washington.
Just that is enough to say, I don't think we're going to have a lot in common.
He was described by a mutual friend of ours, Matt Kibbe, as a progressive who wants to talk to the other side.
And I sat down in my office with Eric and I said, this is going to be an interesting conversation.
You pretty much, if I remember correctly, started the conversation with, I'm not an early 20th century American progressive.
Am I remembering that right, or did I hear that in my...
You asked if I was.
Yes.
And so your answer was.
Well, my answer was, I'm a progressive in the sense simply that I believe that you can't just let things be.
I think that a society, a community, a political system, an economy is like a garden.
You know, when you leave things be for a while, things grow awesome.
They're great, right?
They grow like gangbusters.
But after a certain point, noxious weeds take over and they start to kill the whole thing.
And after a little while of letting things go, the garden tips over and it doesn't.
Well, there's a difference between that and to use your garden.
Let me take it to a farm.
Theodore Roosevelt, so I'll take it out on the Republicans, talked about breeding of humans and compared it to breeding of cattle.
Because noxious weeds, people will marry and they're too stupid to know who to marry and who not to marry.
I mean, there is a place to where the farmer or the rancher takes it too far.
Yeah.
Well, I think, you know, there is a good, wide open space between that vision of, hey, we are citizen gardeners.
We own responsibility for making sure that we tend, that we we, that we see, that we feed the plot between that and eugenics and, you know, that whole worldview.
This is just a personal thing for us.
But would you mind using an analogy that isn't related to vegetables?
We're not familiar with what I'm talking about.
Yeah, no, we just don't understand.
He's a vegetarian.
He still doesn't understand them.
He's like, he hates the fact that he's a vegetarian.
You write, why do most people think power is a dirty word?
Because they think it means coercion and violence.
They associate it with the worst in human nature.
And if I can summarize, there's a couple of things that you say, there are three laws of power.
The first, power concentrates.
That it feeds itself and it compounds, as does powerlessness.
Second, power justifies itself.
People invent stories to legitimize the power that they have.
And third, power is infinite.
There's no inherent limit to the amount of power people can create.
Take me through those three points.
Yeah.
These are pretty fundamental to any understanding, I think, of whether you're on the right or the left, how we live in this incredible age right now of bottom-up citizen power.
People all across the board are knocking over entrenched monopolies, knocking over entrenched systems of status quo.
And so, when you look at those three laws, number one, power concentrates.
You know, when you have it, you tend to get more.
When you don't have it, you tend to get less, right?
And that plays out in economic terms in terms of the rich get richer and so forth, but it's also political, right?
You see it, you see it honestly with the conservatives.
Progressives have control of much of the media, and the conservatives struggle to have a toehold in that media, and we seem to get less and less.
Well, I think that's right.
I mean, I think there is a way in which system, well, okay, so that's number one: power concentrates.
But what you're touching on is also law number two: power justifies itself, right?
So, power, people who tend to be in power, and from your perspective, that's progressives in the media.
For other times in American history, well, let's take it in your field.
I mean, in the university, you can't tell me that you think that progressives don't control the universities and manipulate and justify itself.
Well, I think progressives dominate the academy, progressives dominate the media, right?
But domination is one thing, it's justifying itself as telling these just-so stories about why that ought to be so.
Correct.
Right.
And so, an example that I'll use more from the left is the classic case is trickle-down economics.
To me, the idea that people who are already wealthy and already privileged telling you, you got to take good care of us, man, you got to coddle us and make sure you give us nice tax breaks because that's the only way any of my wealth is going to leak down to the rest of you, right?
Economic theory tells you there's not actually a whole lot of truth to that, but it is a story.
It is a way of justifying people having what they have, right?
White supremacy has always been that kind of storyline.
You know, that, hey, look, whites are better and more suited for governing and governing themselves and running the show than non-whites.
So, this just ought to be the way it is, right?
You, non-whites ought not to be kind of crowding into the public square.
So, if all you had were these two laws here, that power compounds and it justifies itself, you get into a pretty grim doom loop, right?
You get into a situation, well, you get into a dictatorial authoritarian situation.
The only thing that busts you out of that doom loop is law number three, which is that power is infinite, and that people, wherever they are, even if they're outside those circles of concentrated power, can generate new countervailing power out of thin air simply by organizing.
And, you know, I actually on the road have been completely consistent in saying exhibit A is the Tea Party.
The Tea Party 2010 arrived without clout, without connections, without permission, without anybody saying, Hey, go on and kind of lead a movement here to challenge the entrenched status quo in both parties.
But these people remembered that they had infinite power, and that if they simply began to organize with one another, which is simply asking one other human to join you in a common endeavor and say, You know what?
Let's make some plans here.
Let's get on a common message.
Let's do some things together.
That they began fundamentally to change the game, right?
And I think this age that we're in right now is one that connects the Tea Party with Occupy Wall Street, with $15 now, with Black Lives Matter.
You may think, Wow, all these people, I mean, I don't agree with all these people, but the reality is, all of them are remembering that in this bottom-up way, citizens can exercise far more clout and muscle than most of the time we remember we have.
So, this is, and I know this audience is feeling it.
And I say this in the spirit of just defining where we are.
Okay.
As I'm listening to you and I heard about trickle-down economics, I wanted immediately to stop and battle you on that.
There's several things that you said that I immediately wanted to say no.
And that's okay.
But it's okay.
It's okay.
But that's where we get lost because we don't let the other person finish.
And so we're not listening to each other.
But let me, instead of battling on those things, let me take you here on that.
I agree with your three points.
And I agree with you on the last point.
And I'm sorry, I have to say it, but not only power is infinite, with power comes money too.
Money is infinite.
So we spend so much time telling people, sit down, shut up to protect your own power.
And you can't do it because that guy's in your way.
You can't make money because that guy has it all.
Money and power, they're usually put together and they are infinite, as we see in Silicon Valley.
You can dream, you can do.
It's the idea of America.
Here's the thing that I want to get to on this power.
There are progressives on both sides of the aisle.
There are progressives that are Republicans, progressives that are Democrats.
And The original idea was either fascism in the early 20th century.
They thought fascism and communism was neat.
So the early guys were who's going to control the cows?
Who's going to be the rancher on the cows?
Who's going to tell these dummies that don't get it how to live their life?
We'll protect them and we'll have the power.
And so there's fascists and there's communists, if you will.
Both of them end the same way in authoritarianism.
How do we get to a point to where the people who are truly constitutionalist, this is what makes us different?
What the progressives started in the early 20th century is just to bring us back to the European model.
Look at what's happening in France.
Communism or fascism?
40% is voting for fascism or communism.
That's craziness.
How do we get to the point to where we can say, I want you to have the power that you want.
I want you to have all the success that you want.
But I don't want you telling me what success I can have or what I have to believe or what line I have to toe.
I don't want control of your life.
I want 330 million experiments happening that will pop up and I'll go, my gosh, look at that life.
I'd like to pattern my life after that.
Instead of somebody trying to cookie cutter us all.
And I think that's what a lot of people on the left are feeling, especially youth.
They're seeing that current running through the right that says, I want a strong man.
And they miss the strong man on the left.
So how do reasonable people come together in the middle that are saying, Eric, I love you and I respect you and I don't have a problem.
Don't control my life.
I won't control your life.
So I want to start with appreciating what you said at the outset, which was there were three or four moments when I was speaking earlier where you just wanted to hop up and say, no, right?
I think that's huge.
I don't want to just kind of skip past that.
I think it's really worth naming that.
And I'm sure many of your listeners are like, no.
Oh my God.
A couple of people in the room.
So, you know, I think that ability to hear that inside yourself, to kind of sit with that and say, hold on, let's let this play out.
And hang on.
And not stew on it.
Like, okay, I got to wait until he stops.
I got to remember this.
Because I couldn't remember really what I wanted to, I know there were three or four things that I thought of that I wanted to say no, but it's stop yourself and let it go and engage, listen to the other side.
That's really hard.
That verb right there, man.
You know, I think politics, especially in DC, is filled with what I call debaters listening.
Yes.
Right.
You're just listening in as much as you need to get the quick gist of what the guy's saying, and then your wheels are spinning.
How am I going to pound him back?
How am I going to destroy what he just said?
Right.
And what I'm talking about is basically citizens listening.
A human's actual full body listening.
Right.
And checking yourself and saying, okay, before I react, I know my talking points that I'm going to kind of wheel out here.
Right.
And the same thing just happened for me.
You were describing this vision of what you're articulating.
You're describing progressivism as top-down, cookie-cutter, controlling, either fascist or communist.
The state solves everything or tries to solve everything for people.
And the reason why you're here is because I don't believe you believe that.
I don't believe that, right?
And I don't believe, I don't accept that definition in the first place.
But do you believe there are those that do believe that?
I do.
And I think we're here because precisely as you say, because there is a space between that caricature and the caricature that I could throw out, you know, that all libertarians are just complete individualistic, kind of, you know, sociopathic, selfish people who just want to go their own way.
Like that would be equally wrong and stupid.
Correct, right?
Correct.
We've made the media and sound bites, and we are reflecting it in our own conversation.
If we can't judge each other in one soundbite, then we don't engage.
I mean, we get lost.
And those soundbites make us into cartoon characters.
And we're not those cartoon characters.
I have to take a quick break.
And when we come back, we'll have more conversation.
And Eric's also going to be joining me on The Blaze as well for an update.
Just watch The Blaze 5 o'clock on theblazetv.com.
We are one.
The Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury.
The Glenn Beck Program.
Hey, Tay, Tay, 727 Beck.
Eric Liu is our guest.
He's written a book, You're More Powerful Than You Think, A Citizen's Guide to Making Change Happen.
He's a progressive, but a reasonable progressive.
I try to consider myself a reasonable constitutionalist.
And we've had several discussions, and we like each other and strangely trust each other.
At least I trust you.
Because I don't think you're trying to control me and I'm not trying to control anybody else's life.
Rigging the Game00:15:35
People need to hear from the left.
Now, I'm just talking to my audience here.
People need to hear from the left what the left has heard from me.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Didn't see it.
Didn't see, didn't see some of the things I was saying turned out not to be right, not to be true.
Some of the things I claimed about the people I was around, not true.
Shock.
Okay.
Sorry.
When it comes to things like Berkeley, the Antifa movement is extraordinarily dangerous.
It is a coordinated group of anarchists.
It's not the average American saying, hey, let's have reasonable talk.
How do we get people on the left to speak to the people on the right and say, hey, I'm not part of that?
Yeah.
Because that's important.
I think you're actually seeing a fair amount of that right now on the left and the center left.
People saying the answer to Milo or Ann Coulter is not shutting it down.
The answer, quite frankly, is let them talk and pay them no attention if you don't like what they have to say.
Right.
Shutting them down only feeds the beast.
It only feeds the attention.
And again, from a citizen standpoint, you're giving your power to them, right?
The more you try to get it.
But it's not just trying to shut them down.
There is another part of that movement.
The Antifa movement is a global movement of revolutionary communist radicals.
And, you know, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, the edges of the support there, the far edges, and I don't think it's more than 10% on either side.
They wanted to burn the whole thing down and start over.
We shouldn't have anything to do with any of those people.
I don't want to burn the whole system.
I want to fix the system.
This constitution is great.
We just haven't looked at it for a long, long time.
You know, you think about the Trump phenomenon.
I liken it to a virus.
A virus is something, you know, the body telling you, hey, I'm sick.
Right?
And the body politic is sick.
You know, people who want to burn it down, people who want to tear it all down, they need to be listened to because we are in a situation where the game is increasingly weird.
Right?
in just a second.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury.
The Glenn Veck Program.
Just talking to Eric Liu, who said before we went into the break that he sees the Trump movement, and I don't think he meant it as a virus.
He meant it more as a fever, that it is a symptom that something in the body politic is wrong.
And the same thing with the Tea Party, the same thing now with these marches that are happening all around the country.
The same thing, you know, and peaceful and violent, the same thing in Berkeley.
Something is not right.
And these are symptoms.
These are runny nose, fever, watery eyes.
Something's wrong.
And nobody's really paying attention to what is wrong.
They're not listening to the people.
And I'm not sure if we hear the people the same way, but I know we do on the big things.
The people are saying, to tell you a real quick story, George Bush, when we, I met him in the Oval Office the day that Barack Obama said he was going to bomb, he just fly the jets over and bomb Pakistan.
I'm like, that's an ally.
You don't do that.
And I happened to be going into the Oval Office as I heard that.
I went into the president and he said, don't worry, man or woman, Republican or Democrat, doesn't matter who sits behind this desk.
When they get here, they'll realize their hands are tied and they pretty much will do exactly what I've done.
Well, that's what happened with Barack Obama.
And that seems to be what's happening with Donald Trump.
What people are saying is they don't want that.
Who's running this thing?
You know, respond to me, not to whatever this thing is that we've created.
It's the thing.
I like that.
I mean, I think that that thing is elite establishment conventional wisdom.
Yes.
Right.
And for a lot of folks on the right, it's this elite globalist conventional wisdom.
For a lot of folks on the left, it's just an elite corporatist, you know, capitalist.
What is the difference between those?
I think they're quite overlapping.
I think we're responding to the same thing.
I know, because I don't think when at least, and I can't tell you what crazy people think on the far, far right, but I can tell you what this means to me on globalism is bad,
dirty capitalists sitting around and making deals that will get their stuff done, that leave me behind, and this idea that my culture, my language, my life isn't unique.
Yeah.
I mean, everybody, I went over to Sweden and they were trying, literally telling me that they didn't have a unique culture over there.
And I'm like, have you looked at just your architecture?
Yeah.
It's completely unique.
And so I think the globalist thing is of making us all a town that only has a gap and an and tailor.
Yeah.
I don't want that.
I don't want that.
I think that's really right.
And I think there are a lot of people on the left who don't want that.
Right.
Who want a sense of place, who want a sense of community and a sense of purpose that's not some cookie cutter, standard issue thing.
Whether that cookie cutter is coming from the government or whether that cookie cutter is coming from global corporations.
It doesn't matter.
They're one in the same at this point.
And I think this is one of the things that you have to listen to folks, whether they're supporting Trump here in the United States or they support Le Pen in France, Brexit.
What you have to hear is this.
This obsession that people have over sovereignty isn't just about borders and immigration policy.
It is about the sense of, I don't want to be part of a standard issue, globalized, bland cookie cutter thing.
And does the left feel that way?
I think there are lots of folks on the left who feel that way right now.
And I think some of the most interesting innovation that's happening socially, economically, civically is happening in cities.
People on the left are rediscovering the power and the beauty of cities.
And they're not saying, hey, let's ask the federal government to fix everything, partly because the federal government isn't going to fix everything.
But I live in Seattle, and you and I will disagree on this policy-wise, but I support a $15 minimum wage, right?
Mainly what I support, though, is the chance for Seattle to experiment with a $15 minimum wage.
Look, you'll never hear me, I am not on record ever saying a bad thing about Massachusetts healthcare.
If Massachusetts wants to do that in their state, they should, and I hope they master it.
But it should be 50 state experiments, and every city should be experimenting.
If the city wants to do that, that's great.
It's what I call network localism, right?
It's not just I'm going to retreat to my little town and kind of wall out the world.
It's saying, I'm going to do experiments in my town.
Yes.
And I'm going to find out what experiments people are doing in other towns.
And I'm going to learn from that.
And some towns, it's going to be about wages.
In some towns, it'll be about affordability of housing.
Whatever the issue is, let's learn from each other, right?
This to me is a vision that I defy you to put that in a right or left box.
It's not.
I defy you to put that in a Republican or Democrat box.
I will tell you, I think that is the founder's vision.
The problem is, is that we have left the federalist idea and we've glommed on to this giant global government.
one answer fits all from Washington.
Well, I got news for you.
A $15 an hour minimum wage in New York City ain't enough.
In Walla Walla, Washington, it's far too much.
It doesn't make sense.
And it's only being done.
And if you really cared, if Congress really cared about this, they would have just made a minimum wage, passed a law that affixed itself to the cost of living.
They don't do that.
Why?
Because that gets rid of their power.
They need to continue to bring this up over and over again and say, see, they're standing against putting food in your mouth.
And it's ridiculous.
But getting back to the local power, that's where the founders wanted all of it.
I think we live in an incredible age of local power right now.
And I think this is true on the left, the right, the center.
I think there's a lot of experimentation going on.
Do you really believe that, I mean, you look at freedom is not on the march.
It's so strange.
At a time when everything is being customized, everything.
I don't have to go and get a case for my iPhone at the iPhone store that looks like everybody else.
I can design my own.
I can design my own clothing and have it made in China for me at pretty close to the same cost.
I mean, it's crazy what's coming.
Everything is customized, except government and especially global government and banking.
They're going the opposite way.
Freedom's not on the march.
Giant control is on the march.
And it's crushing.
And I don't understand how the left, the ones who you appeal to, the ones who are saying, no, I want to do the things in my town.
I don't understand how you don't see that coming.
Look, I actually, maybe this is a glass half full, half empty kind of deal, but I do agree that over the last four decades or so, there has been this march towards centralizing control, toward rigging of the game, right?
But I think we are in the midst of what I just call a great pushback.
Like this is what makes this moment so exciting right now.
I think there are people who are saying enough of that.
And sometimes they're saying it in very primal screen ways in electing a guy like Donald Trump.
Other times they're doing it in ways that are very focused on the local.
But in all cases right now, and sometimes it's off the national media radar screen, right?
Think about, you know, I write about this in my book, Hair Braiders, right?
There's this quiet little movement going on around the country right now where people who braid hair for a living and who have been basically working under all of these onerous regulations, right?
State and local regulations trying to govern the way that they braid hair, trying to treat this as a thing that needs to kind of jump through 15 hoops.
And these hair braiders, who are often in low-income communities, often communities of color, saying, Hey, we're just braiding hair for each other here.
We don't need to go through 15 permits here, right?
Something like this, which is not about national politics, it's not about left or right.
These are folks who you might say are predisposed to vote Democrat or predisposed to be left, but they are working with libertarians right now, with the Institute for Justice, to say, Let's push back and roll back these regulations, right?
Because this is a moment where people are saying, Let me have more control over my little sphere of life here.
This is the kind of thing, though, that we have to look at everywhere.
So it's not just because I'll stand with you on the hair braiders.
Will you stand with me on Tesla in Texas, not allowed to have a showroom of that?
That's a classic rigging of the game.
Why aren't they allowed?
Because traditional car dealers have rigged the legislative game.
Exactly right.
Why have they done that?
Because they like having a monopoly.
It's a lot easier.
I mean, this is human nature, right?
Let's not kid ourselves, right?
Capitalists don't love competition.
Capitalists' dream state endgame is total monopoly, right?
That's what they all would like to have.
It'd be easier.
I'm going for.
That's what you're going for, ultimately.
I think Adam Smith capitalism.
I mean, you can't teach wealth of nations without moral sentiments.
That's right.
And if you have moral sentiments, to me, that's true capitalism.
And moral sentiments creates people more like Benjamin Franklin.
That's right.
And that's it.
We are so in sync on that.
And I think we would agree too: Goldman Sachs today does not have moral sentiments.
No, very little in morality.
And I don't mean to pick on one firm there, but firms like that that are worshiping at the altar of maximizing shareholder value for short-term profit do not have moral sentiments in mind, right?
And so if we're going to reform this stuff, again, is what I just said right or left?
I don't know.
But what I said is just, I'm against top-down control.
I'm against people rigging the game.
These car dealers, that example is a great one, right?
The difference is we have made everything about right and left, and there is a space for right and wrong.
And we're not talking about that anymore.
We're not talking about what you just said, all the stuff that you just said, I'm with you.
100%.
Are you guys with me?
Oh, yeah.
I'm with you.
100%.
But then there is the structure of those who don't know and then who do know on both sides that do not want people like you and I to be able to get along.
Yeah, you bet.
And there are people, look, pick your issue.
Criminal justice reform is one where our friend Matt Kibbe, who introduced us, right?
Matt and I and Matt and other folks on the left, just like you and others, have been working in cross-ideological, cross-partisan ways to say, it is insane that we have this prison-industrial complex growing and metastasizing the way it is right now.
What does it mean to you?
It means, so this is interesting, right?
From a social justice liberal perspective, I hate the fact that you have this what people call a school-to-prison pipeline where you start kind of putting kids, kids of color, especially, from the time they're in middle school into this detention pipeline that eventually makes them more and more likely to eventually get incarcerated, right?
That offends me.
It offends me the ways in which the disproportionality of the results of that system crush a lot of brown and black men, especially, right?
From a libertarian or conservative perspective, it offends you, and it ought to offend you, that you have this creeping, growing state, this kind of government expansion in the prison sector that's not just about prisons eating up more and more of state budgets, but now it's about corrections officers unions making big donations to politicians and staving off reform.
Constitution as Argument00:03:04
And it's about a rigging of the game that says, hey, come on, it's good for everybody if we keep on building prisons.
It's good for everybody if we start looking at the school districts where you have local farmers so you can start projecting where you're going to have more prisoners in this country.
It's not just there.
It's the prisoners of living your own life on things like Department of Children and Family Services that's getting out of control.
We all want to make sure that if a kid is being abused, we are there.
But man, that thing is getting out of control.
To push back a little bit, though, I mean, we're talking to Eric Lou, the book is, You're More Powerful Than You Think.
And there's romance there and like that we can all have that ability to change things.
But a lot of the examples you're using are small groups rising up and saying, the government needs to get out of my way so I can do the things that I want to do.
And we're all, I think, on that.
What I would push back a little bit on is if there is a group that comes together and their goal winds up being locking in some government the ability to take things from others, for example, higher taxes, more regulation, whatever that is, because a lot of these groups do organize for those things.
Isn't that sort of a misguided use of that, of this?
Shouldn't we be for, instead of for the hairbraiders, shouldn't we be for the Constitution?
Look, I think you and I, especially, Glenn, are for the Constitution.
But what that means is remembering that the Constitution itself is an argument.
It is not a settled resolve thing that says, oh, if you believe in the Constitution, you all believe in the following five things.
Correct.
The Constitution is by design one of these kind of core tensions.
It enshrines an inherent tension between liberty and equality, right?
Between color and color consciousness.
And responsibility.
Sure.
But look, look, that.
Hang on.
I've got to take a break, otherwise I'm going to be up and miss this.
And we're going to have more conversation today at five o'clock.
It's just a great conversation.
Eric Liu, the name of the book is You're More Powerful Than You Think.
Glenn Beck Program.
888 727 back.
Mercury.
The Glenn Beck Program.
Eric, Liu, can you answer Stu's question?
Look, I think the reality is that the arguments over taxes and who has what are in the field of what I just call normal politics, right?
Where we are agreeing that we're going to have different views about how much we should value liberty versus how much we should value equality.
And we can have that tug of war.
And that's what American politics is.
That's what respecting the Constitution is, is saying it's a constant argument.
Where I'm worried about is when people start saying, you know what, let's just try to have final victory on one side or the other.
This age of citizen power is about recognizing that normal politics is a game of infinite repeat play and you got to keep on getting out in the field and playing.