Editor’s note: Below is Glenn Beck’s speech on November 19, 2011 at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend in West Palm Beach, Florida (Nov. 17-20, 2011). It is preceded by an introduction by David Horowitz. To watch the video, click for Part I here and for Part II here.
David Horowitz: I am honored and incredibly privileged to introduce my friend, Glenn Beck, the busiest man on God’s green earth.
Glenn began life in circumstances that would crush most of us, and almost did him. He’s gone on to become one of the most successful and important political figures of our era. He is a major force in American media, the host of top-ranked radio and television shows that have reached millions of listeners and viewers. He’s the author of six New York Times bestsellers in both fiction and nonfiction and the organizer of unprecedented mass demonstrations – in Washington to restore hope for our country, and in Jerusalem to declare his solidarity with the Jewish state – as its citizens are threatened with a second holocaust by their Islamic enemies.
As the organizer of the 9⁄12 movement and march on Washington, Beck is the real creator of the American Tea Party, the most important development in conservatism in our era and, in many ways, the last best hope for America’s future.
He is currently in the process of launching Glenn Beck TV and Mercury Enterprises, a media complex which is designed to break the virtual monopoly of the Left on American audiences, a monopoly that exerts itself either through direct control of media channels like MSNBC or through vicious attacks on advertisers who provide sponsorship for conservative programs like Glenn Beck’s on Fox.
Glenn has been the target of the most vicious attacks of which the Left is capable. He has been ridiculed and derided. His sanity has been questioned, and his character has been assaulted. He has been called racist, sexist, Islamophobic, and every other term the verbal assassins of the Left regularly invoke to destroy the conservatives they fear the most.
Like many other targets of the Left, he has also been attacked by Republican elitists in Washington, and in identical terms – nutcase, reactionary, conspiracy theorist, extremist. These are the words these elitists have used to describe him. Call it the Stockholm syndrome. It is a crippling disease of the Republican Party and of elements in the conservative movement to seek the approval of one’s enemies by attacking one’s friends, to treat one’s enemies as misguided friends, to be polite and courteous to people who want to slit your throat.
Let me tell you a personal story that will illuminate the problem. Twenty-five years ago, I was a recent refugee from the Left and had begun addressing conservative audiences. One of my first invitations came from the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St. Louis, named after a famous hero of the anti-Communist struggle during the Cold War. I had been a leader of the New Left, a Marxist, a self-styled revolutionary, a small-C communist and a large-A anti-American.
But when my conservative host introduced me, he said – this is David Horowitz, who is a former civil rights worker and peace activist. It is not just that my conservative host was too polite to notice that I had been a self-declared enemy of our country and of people like himself. It is that conservatives either do not want to believe that this country has enemies among its own citizens or do not want to be seen by the New York Times and the Washington Post as believing that this country has enemies within.
This is how Barack Obama got elected to the White House. All Republicans allowed themselves to see was a community organizer, a civil rights worker and peace activist. All they saw was a progressive. And that is what socialist, radical, pro-jihadist and anti-American activists call themselves today – progressives.
My parents were card-carrying members of the Communist Party and wanted the Soviet enemy to win the Cold War. But they always referred to themselves as progressives. When the Communist Party ran a candidate for President in 1948, the party they created for the job was called the Progressive Party. Actually, Henry Wallace – I hadn’t thought of this before – was the Joe Biden of his day – the former Democrat Vice President.
This was a ruse to hide their real agendas. Progressive was a good old American thing to be. And 50 years later, conservatives were still buying it hook, line and sinker. Until the arrival of Glenn Beck.
What distinguishes Glenn Beck, what makes him such a game-changing force in the struggle for America’s future, is that he has deconstructed the word “progressive,” put his finger on the enemy, named him, and won’t let him go. That is why Glenn Beck is marked for slaughter by the Left. It is also why conservative elitists in Washington are desperate to disown him. Because his message is discomforting, and because the heart of his message is an unpleasant truth.
Until Glenn Beck came along, ex-radicals like myself were endlessly frustrated by conservatives’ refusal to look at history, refusal to connect the dots, refusal to understand that these are not idealists, but dedicated anti-capitalist, anti-liberty and anti-American crusaders who number in the millions; that they are financed by anti-American billionaires, like George Soros; and leftwing foundations, billionaire foundations, like the Tides Foundation and the Ford Foundation; and communist unions, like the SEIU; and criminal organizations, like ACORN; and that they are part of an international socialist Left which supports our Islamist enemies in the Middle East and Asia.
Former radicals like myself, who knew these people up close and personal, spent years in the conservative wilderness, beside ourselves with frustration as we watched conservatives call communists and socialists and anti-American radicals liberals, and misguided idealists.
And then, along came Glenn Beck. Before an audience of millions, Glenn Beck began to connect the dots and restore the history, and describe the real agendas of the leftist movement and its cynical deceptions, and its monumental crimes. Beck saw that the link between the anarchists and the radicals, the socialists and the liberals, lay in the very term “progressive.”
Progressivism is the religious idea that history is moving in a positive direction, that it is within the political power of human beings, within the power of political activists and governments, to remake the entire world and bring about a paradise of social justice. They believe that the way to do this is by increasing the power of government until the state is able to compel every man, woman and child to be just, and good, and environmentally friendly, and healthy – in a word, progressive. But you cannot compel human beings to be just and good without abolishing their individual freedom. This is the essence of the totalitarian idea. And it is the progressive idea.
This is the truth that Glenn Beck has brought to millions of Americans. This is why leftists hate him and attack him, and why conservative elitists want to disown him.
In 2011, Glenn Beck spoke to the most important conservative gathering in Washington. During his speech, he wrote the world “progressivism” on a blackboard and said – this is the disease. Progressivism is the cancer in America, and it is eating our Constitution. And conservatives attacked him. Not the grassroots conservatives at the CPAC conference, but the elitist conservatives at The Weekly Standard.
The Weekly Standard said that what Beck had written on that blackboard was nonsense and conspiratorial, and tangential to the political realities of our day. Those are quotes – “tangential to the political realities of our day.“ No. The conservative elitists have it exactly wrong. The threat from progressives is the political reality of our day.
Our nation and its institutions are under siege. Obamaism is not a mistaken policy, or several mistaken policies, carried out by civil rights workers and peace activists. It is the latest incarnation of a 200-year-old movement to destroy the American Constitution and the American economic system – what in the old days we used to proudly call – or others used to proudly call the American way of life.
Glenn Beck has been teaching this to millions and millions of Americans, to Tea Party activists and Joe Six-Packs. He has been naming the enemy and revealing his agendas. He has taken on the dragons of American socialism and international socialism which have penetrated the heart and brain of the Democratic Party. And he has documented their unholy alliances with Islamic jihadists and America’s secular, totalitarian enemies.
Glenn Beck is the most prominent voice of freedom in the face of the tyranny at our door. He is a champion of the Jews and their fragile democracy in the face of a second Nazi holocaust currently being organized by rabid Islamists and their progressive friends. He is a man of formidable personal courage, under relentless personal attack; an indispensible leader to millions of conservatives who believe in America and who want its glories to continue.
I am not a man given to prayer. But if I were, the person whose safety and whose health I would be praying for daily – for the sake of my children, and my friends, and my country – would be this man, this great American – Glenn Beck.
Glenn Beck: Thank you.
David, if you don’t mind, I have a box underneath my desk that I put some of my notes and put some of the stories and some of my thoughts in, and some things – I keep records for my children. Because when I started this, I met with my older children, who are now in college. And I said – this is going to change our family. And the only thing that I care about is that you remember who I am. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to take and put what you just said about me in that box, so they remember. Thank you.
Meaningful, thank you.
So, the topic that I was given today was – how much trouble are we in?
I don’t think I really need to tell you, do I?
David Horowitz has been standing guard at this door, along with many of you, long before I got off my couch, put on a pair of pants, took off my sweatpants, and stopped eating Doritos and went to work. And because of that, you’ve given us a chance to survive.
I think the question – how much trouble are we in – I’ll address. But the bigger question that I would like to address today is – how much trouble is the Left in? Because America is waking up. And there’s only going to be one of us standing in the end. And I have every intension of it being us.
The world is changing, and it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. But the world is changing. It’s changing for a myriad of reasons. The systems don’t work. If we took out all of the corruption, all of the greed; we took out all of the politics and everything else, still technology is changing. And the systems that were built shortly after the Industrial Revolution, starting in the 1920s – they don’t work anymore. The networks don’t work anymore. Nothing works. We now have the ability to go one-on-one.
And because of that, the world is changing. And anyone with power is flailing in the water, trying to grab onto anything. Anybody who knows anything about a drowning man – they’ll take you down, too. You don’t jump in the water to save them. They’ll take you down as well. And that’s what’s happening on every front. They’ll take us all down.
Now, that’s the happy news.
The happy news is those people are flailing because they don’t know what else to do. They have built this world, they have been in those positions. This is the way the system works. It’s the record industry against Napster and then iTunes. The record industry is still saying – I don’t know what to do. They’ll do anything to claw their way back.
That’s why regulation is going out of control. You know industries are dying when they go for regulation. And everybody’s going for regulation. Except for the small entrepreneur – get the hell out of my way. Why? Because we have faith in ourselves. We have faith in the end user. I know all I have to do is create a better product, and people will come. That’s America. But we’re turning into Europe at best, and the Soviet Union at worst.
In the end, the world will change. The message that has to be gotten out to the rest of America is – are you going to sleep through it? Because this is the time that historians will write about for decades, if not centuries to come. The world is at a paradigm shift. And if you don’t be a part of it, if you’re not part of it now, if you’re not out redesigning, it will be redesigned for you. Welcome to slavery.
This is a journey unlike any journey that most people have ever traveled on. There is no blueprint for this journey. That’s why historians will look to us. There has never been a group of people at this point that have reversed the tide. But there have never been Americans at this point. When the world is always down, the world always flails in the water, until Americans arrive. Americans are already here. We just have to look to ourselves. We don’t have to take a boat or an airplane to go anyplace. We’re already here! All we have to do is stand up and take charge, and be the people that we have always been. Wake up, America, and we solve our own problems.
In the end, we can either continue down this course as freedom-loving people, and worry about the damn Republicans, and lose; or as freedom-loving people we can stand together and worry about the republic, and win.
The first thing we have to do is stop listening to morons.
We have to stop listening to the people who have been wrong every step of the way. These are the damn people that designed this system! And we go to them and say – okay mister banker, okay mister politician who’s been there the whole time – how do we fix it? How do you fix it? They said it would be fine in the first place. How do we fix it? Many times, we fix it by putting those people in jail.
We have to look to the people who have seen it coming. David Horowitz is one of them.
Because – if you will indulge me – because nobody else ever will, I want to give you a bit of my record, so you see the record, so what I say after this carries any kind of weight. What’s coming?
In 1999, I was in the air on WABC in New York. And I said – listen to the words of Osama bin Laden. And conservatives attacked me and said I was only supporting Bill Clinton. I said – are you out of your mind? I hate the guy.
But if he’s bombing an aspirin factory, and it’s the right thing to do, I guess maybe we should say – okay, don’t like this. But he’s going after Osama bin Laden. And I read the words of Osama bin Laden. And the conservatives attacked me. And I said – mark my words – in this city, there will be blood, bodies and buildings in the streets. And they will be done by Osama bin Laden. Will you then stop playing politics? That was 1999.
In 2004, I begged my audience – do not take out any of these loans. They don’t make any sense. Well, you don’t have an education. I can do basic math. They don’t make sense. Stop.
Eighteen months prior, I was losing my audience. Because conservatives said I was talking down the economy. Eighteen months prior to TARP. I lost about 30 percent of my audience. My stations were canceling. My network came to me and said – please, will you shut up about the economy? Nobody cares. You’re wrong. It’s not going to happen. Sorry. Sorry.
Six months prior, I begged my audience – get out of the stock market. I remember a guy said – he was on television, and the Dow was at 14,000. And he said – we’re looking at 18,000. I looked right in the camera, and I said – don’t listen to that moron. Don’t listen to him. Don’t listen – I’m sorry we even had him on. Get your money out now. I believe it was six days later that the crash came.
It doesn’t take a genius. It takes someone who’s willing to look at common sense, and look at the facts. Last year – hammered for telling people to have some food. Because food prices are going to go up. This administration – how dare them! – betrayed our public, betrayed the average person by saying – oh, there is no such thing as inflation. When all I said was have food! That’s too conspiratorial? Prepare for hard times.
Thanksgiving dinner is now 13 percent higher than it was last year. Thirteen percent higher. It may not mean a lot to the people in this room, but it sure the hell means a lot to a lot of Americans who are struggling to get by. Thirteen percent.
I want you to do this. I want you to go to the Fed’s website. They’ve got a little game for kids to play – what’s it like to be Ben Bernanke for the day? Can you fix the economy?
Yes. My six-year-old could be Ben Bernanke for a day and do a better job. Go to the Fed’s website. On the Fed’s website there’s a little game, made for kids – can you control inflation? Do this test. Go to the website, and put in 0 percent interest on money. Put it in there. Run that program for three years. You could do it today. Project it out three years. Shows inflation at 17 percent. If anybody looks at the non-game-playing adjusted inflation, the way we used to calculate during the Carter years, the way we used to calculate inflation, it is now – bottom 11, top 17 percent. So the Fed’s own website shows – yeah, you do this for three years, yeah, Thanksgiving dinner will go up 13 percent. Put it and run it for four years. Inflation goes from 17 percent to 38 percent. All you have to do is be like a kid, and look at the facts.
Everyone tries to dismiss what these – everybody’s got a backup plan. Everybody’s got – well, I got a system. Ah, you don’t have to worry about that, it’s going to be different this time. No, it’s not. It never is. Two plus two equals four. Not five, not seven, not 10; four. Every time, four. That’s the way it works.
Hammered in January. I have been looking for the Archduke Ferdinand moment. Tunisia, I said. A man sets himself on fire. That is the Archduke Ferdinand moment of this generation. It will cascade across the land. It will sweep the Middle East. Radicals, communists, socialists, Islamists, revolutionaries will collude. To collapse the Western way of life, they will destroy Israel and the United States of America. And anti-Semitism not seen since the 1930s will return.
Of course, I was a crazy man. Unless you read the papers today. Israel is our only real friend.
And we have betrayed them. We are doing more than that. We are betraying ourselves, our God and our legacy by not standing up now. I studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. The reason why Bonhoeffer lost in Germany is because there’s a short window. You cannot play the games of marchers out in the streets like Martin Luther King to a society that has gone to hell already.
There’s this amazing speech given by Adolf Hitler, where they started to actually – the idea was to take the SS, and – you can rat on your neighbor. If you see something, say something. Rat on your neighbor. Well, the people of Germany were so far off the scale that they were taking things from somebody who screwed them in middle school, like – oh, I’ve always wanted to get them back – and turn them in. Hitler actually said – I’m paraphrasing – it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever read. This is Adolf Hitler. He said – what the hell is wrong with you people? Adolf Hitler! Looking at the Germans, and saying – you disgust me.
That’s when he knew he had them. Because they were so internally corrupt that he could do anything. And he did.
There’s about an 18-month window. And I contend we’re in it. An 18-month window that if you don’t slip through that window, there’s no going back. And in that 18-month window, that is the moment that a Martin Luther King, or a Gandhi, or an Abraham Lincoln need to appear, and need to lead the people to righteousness. Or profound global darkness will come.
Occupy Wall Street is some of the most dark, evil stuff I’ve ever seen. I am moving out of New York City. I attended a movie in the park with my daughters and my wife this summer. I’m used to getting the slings and arrows. I get it. But leave my children alone. My children were a block away from me. And people – women! – were standing up and pointing, and screaming at my children – get out of New York! My children. I wasn’t with them.
The country is splitting. But Martin Luther King was right. If you put goodness next to evil, if you compare them, and you let people see them – that’s what they’re trying to do at Occupy Wall Street. They are trying to make the police officers look bad. Those police officers – I got news for you. I’m about ready to go club a few of those dopes in the head for them. These police officers are amazing! They’re standing there now for, how long, two months? Standing there. Being called every name. Being pushed and poked and prodded. And they do nothing. Those are Americans.
We have people who glorify cop killers. We have rapes going on. How many people have died? Seven? And the media says nothing.
1968, as David knows – a banner year for the American Left. But 1968 was also the year of the moon shot. When you had pigs rolling around in the mud, you also had man walking up on the moon. And America was split. Am I Woodstock? Or do we reach out and touch the stars?
America has the choice again. The same choice, with the same people. But in 1968, the riots were in the streets. And because the same people are there, and they’re trying to recreate ‘68, let’s look what happened in the 1960s. We had four assassinations. Let me ask you – there were four Presidents in the history of our country that have been assassinated. How many of them have been killed by Marxists? Three. Three. The only one that wasn’t a Marxist was John Wilkes Booth. And he was a revolutionary. He wanted to dissolve the republic.
In the 1960s, JFK was killed by a Marxist, whipped up by a foreign power. RFK – killed by a Jordanian who didn’t want any more support going for Israel. The Palestinians were oppressed. MLK was killed by a racist; Malcolm X killed by the Nation of Islam. Do we have any of those seeds that are being planted right now?
They will recreate ‘68. The question is, are we strong enough to stand? There is no moon shot. There is nothing to have us look to the heavens. Because NASA’s too busy telling Islam how great it is.
Here’s where we’re headed. Possibility – World War III. Because Israel has a right to survive, Israel has a right to live, the Jews have a right to be left alone by the rest of the world – they will defend themselves, as they should.
I sat with Benjamin Netanyahu, probably five years ago now. I could’ve done the interview today. I said – look, here’s what’s going to happen. Nobody’s going to do anything about Iran. The world will do nothing. And then, if this moment of hope – this is where I had it wrong – this moment of hope will be on the edge of peace, and you will be forced to strike. Because it will be all lies. And the world will turn around and say it’s the Jews that started all of this. And it will be by design.
It’s not a moment of hope. It is a moment of chaos. I should’ve listened to Ahmadinejad. As a Twelver himself, he knows – when he says, “Oh, Allah, give me the strength to hasten the return of the Promised One,” the question I had for my comrades – and I use that word exactly the right way – my comrades at CNN – I asked them – what does he mean? What does he mean by “hasten the return of the Promised One?“ Who’s the Promised One, does anybody know? Nobody! Oh, he says that religious junk, it’s just for the – no, it’s not. He means it. The Twelfth Imam is one spooky dude that crawls out of a well. You believe it, don’t believe it – I don’t really care. They believe it. They believe it. And the way to hasten the return of the Promised One is to create global chaos.
Well, gee. That sounds like Occupy Wall Street, quite honestly. Create global chaos. World War III – possibility. Guaranteed anti-Semitism not seen since the 1930s. Guaranteed economic – not depression; collapse. Collapse. And civil war. You cannot put this genie back in the bottle.
But there is something else. There’s something that I’d like to focus on here. These things are coming. But so is this. Healing. Healing and profound light, should we choose it. Now.
De Tocqueville was right when he said America is great because America is good. Why are they attacking our churches? Because it’s the source of our goodness. It’s the source of our faith, our hope, our charity. I don’t care what church you go to. I don’t care what synagogue you go to. That’s what’s connecting us with each other and something higher than ourselves. Of course they’re attacking that.
I am a guy that nobody would’ve even hired, nor should they have, 15 years ago. I’m a recovering alcoholic that screwed up my whole life. I betrayed everybody in my life, I built a whole life of lies. Until I admitted that my life was out of control. Until I was at the point of life or death – which do you choose, life or death? Interesting that that’s what Moses said. Choose life or death. I chose life. But I didn’t know how.
America and the rest of the world is at that same point. Choose! Light or dark, life or death! Choose today!
It was because of good friends, a loving spouse, who all allowed me to hear the truth – you suck. And it’s your fault. And then, by the grace of God, and the strength of faith, that I stand before you today. That’s what has to happen in America.
My mother died because she got to the point, when I was a young teenager – she got to the point where she had to choose life or death. She chose death. Some people will. Some people have one drink. And they say – wow, you know, that made me really feel like garbage, and I could probably have a problem with that, and they never drink again.
I don’t know where everybody’s scale is. Some are going to have to perish. Unfortunately, they will choose that. You can’t save everybody. We have to now look into the mirror ourselves and say – what do I choose? And will I dedicate everything in my life? There is nothing less at stake than the very republic in which we have all enjoyed and the freedom of mankind. That’s what’s at stake. Are you up to the challenge of saving it? The answer should be – yes! If we just have 10 percent. Ten percent is the tipping point.
Principles of God are everywhere. Ten percent. He asks you for 10 percent. Tithe 10 percent is what He asks. But in the end, if you really understand tithing, and you really do it, you know it’s 10, then it’s 11, then it’s 15, then by the time you’re – it’s all of it, whatever. He takes it all.
The same thing with evil. Just be 10 percent – you’re 90 percent good. But you can take 10 minutes here. You’re 90 percent there. That’s good enough. Look at them, they’re not even 90 percent. And you allow yourself to be 90 percent good. Do it 90 percent. And pretty soon, it’s 89, 87, 85, 70, 60.
That’s how you get people to put people into gas chambers. Little pieces at a time. You don’t show up – nobody shows up like a storm trooper and says – hey, what do you say we gas all these people? You’d say – you’re out of your mind, you’re a crazy person. It takes time. Give me 1 percent today. Just say something bad about them. Start to dehumanize them a little bit. You know what, just take away their radio. Yeah, maybe they should shop at another store. That’s how you do it.
So let’s use the positive, and fix the 10 percent. Let’s use that God-given concept and change the course of the entire planet.
Culture. Culture is under attack. And all of our children – they’ll watch, whatever it is. They’ll listen, whatever it is. And how many Americans say – oh, my kids know the difference. No, they don’t. This is the culture they were raised in. There is nothing that’s the standard. They don’t have what we had.
I remember walking around in grocery stores when I was a kid. I’d say something, I’d do something, I’d mouth off at somebody. An adult would come around that corner of that grocery store and say – knock it off. I know your father. He wouldn’t like that. You’d be like, oh crap.
Even if they didn’t know our parents, they still said knock it off. We were a team. We had shared values. We don’t. The values that are being jammed down our throat are just that. They’re being jammed down our throat, they’re being enforced through intimidation, because we don’t believe in those things. The things we do believe in we won’t stand up for. Because we’re afraid.
The media is coming undone. The lies are being exposed. There’s a tipping point, and it’s all about here. It’s about to tank.
I’m setting on a journey to redesign the media. I don’t know if I’m going to be the one that does it. But somebody will. Because this system doesn’t work, and it’s got to be built on the truth, and a new way of doing business.
I was just in Nashville. I talked to some of the leaders of country music. And I said – look, the culture is under attack. There’s got to be a coordinated effort to take some music and move us ahead, some inspiration, anything.
Financial sector is going to fix itself. Not in a good way. But it’s the Kondratiev wave. Kondratiev was the first economic advisor for Stalin. Ended with a bullet in his head. Because he had to think about which is better – communism or capitalism. Ah, it’s Stalin asking the question, I think it’s communism.
He said let me think about it, I’ll get back to you on it. He had some time to think about it in a gulag. He came up with the Kondratiev wave. Green shoots. That’s where that comes from. Green shoots.
You’re in winter. Then you see a green shoot. That’s somebody having an idea. Wait a minute. It doesn’t have to be that way. I got a better idea. In their garage. A kid. Little Billy Gates. Little Stevie Jobs. They have an idea, a green shoot. And then, that idea starts to roar to life, and spring is here. An exuberance. And then the arrogance of summer – it’s always going to be this way.
And things get ugly, and people start making stupid moves. Because it will always be summer. And then the leaves start to change. And a few people say – wait a minute, look at the leaves. Wait a minute, something’s going on. What’s happening? Something’s happening here. Others say no, it’s always like – it’s going to be summer all the time. Then the leaves fall off the trees. And dummies – this is what he actually said that actually got him thrown into the gulag and executed – he said – this is where communism goes wrong. They try to take the trees and uproot them, and put them in greenhouses. It doesn’t work. You’ll kill all the trees. They need the time to rest, and regenerate, and green shoot.
The financial sector will fix itself. But our faith-based life we must be responsible of. Our education – we must stand guard on our education. Our university system is corrupt to the core. To the core. We need to, as people, decide – do we continue to support this that is corrupting our society and our children?
I have a book on my desk from 1946. It’s called “Hitler’s Professors.“ They went in in 1946 and wanted to document, what happened here? What a surprise. Was in the universities. But we can’t just stand guard against the universities, because too much has been lost. We must, as people, guard our current history, our current truth; correct ourselves the things that are wrong – the missing pieces of our founders, the missing pieces of Woodrow Wilson.
The fifth-best President? All the professors across, in every grand institution all across America, say – oh, Woodrow Wilson, one of the top five Presidents of all time. The guy was a monster. A monster.
We have to be in charge of our own history. If the republic is to survive, it’s going to survive because of us as individuals, and what we do. The political system is going to fix itself with jail time. There are people now in the streets calling for guillotines. That’s not America. Jail time is, for those who have been involved in corruption – jail time. No one is – we are a country of laws, and not of men.
We need to go back and listen to George Washington. He had all of the answers in his farewell address. Here’s a guy who never, ever wanted to serve. He didn’t want to do those things. At 16 years old, he just wanted to go be in the navy. And his mother is crying – oh, George. He goes up the gangplank, gets onto the ship. Oh, George, how could you leave your mother?
And he comes back down, and he said – never, mother. I will not leave you. Every step of the way, that man did what the right thing was. Not for him, but for someone else.
I have given up trying to find those people in Washington. Washington takes them in, chews them up and spits them out. Great. The lesson should be – we’re putting too much emphasis on Washington. Why do we need to send one lamb into the lion’s den? Shut the damn lion’s den down!
(Applause)
The power is with the people, not the corruption in Washington. When we change our homes, when we change our communities, when we change our states, Washington changes. The answer will not come from Washington. Only more of the cancer will come from Washington. The cure comes from us as individuals and our homes.
I was reading Abraham Lincoln’s last inaugural speech. Times have not changed. At the time he gave that speech, the world was on fire. America was. And rage was the in feeling. Vengeance. They started it. They did it. Get ‘em! Punish ‘em!
The inaugural speech – his Vice President got up to speak first. And he was hammered. And his speech, basically, was that – get ‘em! And let me tell you something else about the South! They cause all these problems! He’s hammered out of his mind. And Lincoln had to be sitting back there and say – this is the worst Vice President. It’s going to take Joe Biden to beat this guy.
And Abraham Lincoln got up to speak. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to speak. He certainly didn’t want to say the things that he had to say. Because nobody wanted to hear this. Everybody wanted blood. My son, my daughter! My family’s been ripped apart, killed, maimed! My country! Because of these people over here. Get ‘em! You got ‘em! Now take ‘em out!
When Grant had Lee, Lincoln received a telegram – I have him. I have him. What should I do? Lincoln’s response was – let him up gently, and tell him to go home.
So now, at the second inaugural address, his Vice President in a drunken stupor, Abraham Lincoln gets up. Starts walking towards the podium. And there’s a guest on the podium who hates Abraham Lincoln, and is so enraged when he sees him, he actually stands up and lunges towards Lincoln. A police officer happens to be there and stands in between them. And the guy gets control of himself, and looks up at the police officer and President Lincoln, and says – sorry, I slipped. And the police officer said – because he recognized him, because he was sitting with the daughter of a very famous Northern senator – she was the Paris Hilton of her day, and he was the Leonardo DiCaprio of the time. And so the police officer said – oh, I know who you are. Sure. I understand, Mr. Booth. And Abraham Lincoln walked on. Rage.
Abraham Lincoln came to the podium and just said – with malice toward none, and charity for all. It is the message of every great leader at times of trouble. It’s what Bonhoeffer tried to say and no one would listen, because it was too late. It was the message of Abraham Lincoln, and Gandhi. It has always been the underlying message of the United States of America – with malice toward none, and charity for all.
The next 18 months are going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Darkness beyond our wildest imagination. But I’m here to tell you – as darkness grows, so does the light. You’re about to see flashes of light unlike you’ve ever seen before. Because this time, it’s happening in America. Americans cannot turn their eyes from it. It’s not overseas, it’s here. And they will rise. And they will rise with malice toward none, and charity for all.
Thank you, and God bless.
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