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SyndicateWhat Now, Glenn Beck?
By Robert Ringer - Thursday, September 2, 2010
The way the media covered Glenn Beck’s 8/28 Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial is shameful, but not unexpected. That said, as clueless as Geraldo Rivera is, I’ll give him credit for covering the event extensively.
But never underestimate Geraldo’s ability to come up with absurdities. In this case, the absurdity was to have Al Sharpton as a guest on his show Saturday night – for the full hour! – to comment on the Beck rally and compare it to his own “Reclaim the Dream” rally on the same day.
I found it highly insulting to have the format of the show be a comparison between Beck’s historic gathering and Sharpton’s anemic attempt to recreate a 1960s-syle civil-rights march. What made it even more pathetic was that every time Sharpton spoke on Geraldo’s show, he had something negative to say about Beck or the Restoring Honor event. He came across as an angry, unknowledgeable child desperately in search of a scapegoat for his own lack of accomplishments.
Quite obviously, I was not at the Sharpton rally, but numerous reports from creditable sources place attendance in the 2,000-3,000 range. By contrast, the Beck event – which I did attend – drew a minimum of 500,000 people. (Trust me, minimum.) What is sad is that the only people who will ever know just how historic the event was are those who were in attendance, because, as I said at the outset, the media coverage was shameful.
The entire three hours of the Restoring Honor rally was filled with a spirit of goodwill and inclusiveness, with a focus on God as the answer to restoring the greatness that once signified America. By contrast, Sharpton’s pitiful attempt to counter the Beck rally was (according to news reports) filled with the same old angry rhetoric that smacks of black liberation theology. (You know, “You must give back that which you have taken.”)
The people who still buy into this kind of angry theater are anachronisms of yesteryear, those who demand endless apologies, special treatment for past injustices, and never-ending free goodies from government (meaning, from taxpayers). They seem determined to make sure that white guilt remains alive and well in perpetuity. They don’t want to move on. It’s much more comfortable to continue promoting the security of “Uncle Sam’s plantation.”
The only statement at the Beck event that came close to being political was made by Sarah Palin, who said, “We must not fundamentally transform America as some would want; we must restore America and restore her honor.” (I would argue that it was simply a statement of fact that fit in perfectly with the theme of restoring honor to America.)
America is dying, and pretty much everyone knows it. It has, in fact, been dying at an accelerating pace throughout my lifetime. So Beck is right about the need to restore honor as the foundation for restoring America to its long-lost greatness.
Most Americans not only are without honor, they have no interest in even hearing about it. In the anything-goes America of the 21st century, we are witnessing the long-awaited triumph of Rousseau’s relativism. Certitudes are out; collective slavishness – in dress, eating, thinking, and speaking – are in.
So, where does Glenn Beck go from here? Should the worst happen and Beck lose his eyesight, will that be the end of his mission? No, I don’t believe that for a second. As someone who has watched virtually every Glenn Beck show for the past four years (going all the way back to the days when he was working for minor-league CNN Headline News), I feel like I have known this man all my life.
As the normally jaded Chris Wallace pointed out in his interview with Beck after the event, nothing like Glenn Beck has ever happened before. No mere mortal could possibly accomplish what Beck has accomplished over the past several years – and certainly not in the way he has accomplished it.
I believe his rise from a life of shame and failure to what is rapidly becoming the most powerful voice for good in America has been divinely guided. I believe he has been tapped on the shoulder by God to perform a Moses-like mission in a once-great nation that has devolved into a moral cesspool.
I believe Beck when he says he will never give up. I believe him when he says if he is forced off television, he will find another platform that is even bigger. I believe him when he says he is willing to die if that’s what it takes to speak the truth.
I pray that Glenn Beck will not lose his eyesight, but if it should happen, I believe he will become more powerful than ever and thus an even a greater force for good. If this tragic circumstance should occur, I believe he will see it as a Jobian moment – a Divine test of his belief. It could, in fact, be the very thing that spurs him to run for president, despite the fact that he has clearly stated he has “zero interest in the job.”
Anyone interested in human nature cannot help but to find it fascinating how many of the greatest men and women throughout history have been vilified and hated by a large percentage of the population. And whenever that be the case, you can count on an equally large segment of the population to adore that same person. It’s a scenario that fits Glenn Beck to a T.
The details of how the Beck saga unfolds from this point forward are unknown, but one thing that is certain is that his journey will continue to be an historic one. Something is happening in this country that has never happened before – at least in my lifetime. It almost tempts one to say that it’s a showdown between good and evil.
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ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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18 Responses to “What Now, Glenn Beck?”
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Robert, I’ve been following you since the 80s. I love your common sense ideas and it is fitting that you see Glenn Beck as a like mind… another voice of sanity.
When we finally reach the tipping point and the “average” American realizes it is time to get off the couch, we will need people like you and Beck to fuel the fires of freedom.
I am a Vietnam veteran and when I talk with other ordinary Americans, I’m seeing that spark that something is wrong and setting it right will be our obligation… not a choice,
Keep up the good fight!
Tom
it was brilliant of geraldo to have sharpton on for the full hour … allowing him to fully expose himself for who he really is
Bullseye Robert. You are dead center in the target. It is deafening the silence in the mainstream media re: Beck’s occasion on The Mall and what’s worse the dispicable comments those in the press did levy against Mr. Beck. It only brought in to clearer focus what morally vacant hipocrates they are. Not to mention insanely jealous of Mr. Beck’s well deserved success.
As to Al Sharpton, anyone ALIVE who can’t see he’s just an ignorant, ghetto Jesse Jaskson wanna-be is all three; deaf, blind and stupid. For Rivera or anyone else in journalism to give this racist piece of crap even 10 seconds is going way overboard. He is one of the most self-serving pieces of human debris I’ve ever seen.
Lastly Robert, I pray, like you that Mr. Beck’s eyesight does not worsen as this man is making an incalculable difference in “Restoring Honor” in America and we need the steel character of a Glenn Beck X millions in this country. I’m afraid it’s going to take a very long time to wake this country up out of their decades long slumber but Mr. Beck has made more than an impact. God Bless Him, God Bless you Robert for taking up this issue publicly and God Bless The Unites States of America.
Michael M. Middle Tennessee
I think it is a mistake to deify any man. It appears to me that is what you are doing with Beck. I agree that Beck is doing some good things but the format of this big show at the Lincoln Memorial leaves me wondering where Beck is heading.
Lincoln himself has been deified in the minds of most Americans. Very few realize that Lincoln was not much more than a very effective politician who ran roughshod over the Constitution. He turned a voluntary union (federation) of states into a form of mandatory union by the use of force and at the cost of 650,000 lives including many civilians.
Beck used a prominent politician to help him make his rally stand out. The people who make up the tea party do not need national names to make their positions felt. Hopefully most of the people in this movement will recognize that all they need to do is constantly vote out of office every incumbent politician.
By using the Lincoln Memorial, Beck is signaling that he likes the idea of big government with large military forces that can project power across the world. This is not in the interests of individual liberty.
Bob
Wonderful recount of Glenn Beck’s Rally and his life struggle. White guilt alone put the guy in the White House. The liberal media pushes its moral narcissism at us every day telling us what to buy drive and eat. The message is essentially that freedom is outmoded and we have to demonstrate how much we care and feel.
Notice the word think is gone as you pointed out in Winning Through Intimidation. Legalman has done a heck of a job aiding and abetting the slide of the last thirty years.
Perhaps 2013, the centennial observance of the beginning of the death of the republic (Fed/IRS/Death of States Rights) will be a reprise of 1981. Hopefully we can avoid 21.5% prime along the way
“Reality isn’t the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are.” – Robert Ringer
Reality: There is no God. Sorry, Glenn.
You are “almost tempred to call it a contest between good and evil”??? It has appeared over the past year more and more clear to me and to my friends and family members that this is exactly what is going on. Just as our loving and merciful God let the most horrific manifestation of evil in human history, the Soviet Union, exist for 72 years, the lessons we learned from that geographically far away agony were short lived. Now the same tactics, starting with “Let’s push God out of public life” and “Respect all religions, but do not mention Jesus Christ” are being applied much closer to home. Hopefully now enough of us will recognise the threat for what it really is (Good vs. Evil) and fight as though our eternal lives depended on the outcome.
Neil E. Clapp
Thank you Mr. Ringer. It is very encouraging to read you in a positive attitude about Glenn Beck. I can’t think of anyone that has reported on him in such a way that talks about his call to wake up America as you have in this. Everyone else seems to want to steal his thunder or belittle him which to me shows they don’t understand he is for real, they can’t stand someone being able to articulate a message so clear that we as citizens of this great country can understand it. May God bless him and you.
I like much of the work that Mr. Beck is doing. And there is no question that his attempts to educate the public on certain key issues have made more than a big difference. His efforts have made an historical difference. But here’s the main problem that I have with Mr. Beck: Beck is likely going to falter at some crucial point in time. What do I mean? I mean that I don’t hear the entire truth coming from Mr. Beck like I do coming from somebody such as Ron Paul; Therefore, I don’t trust Mr. Beck or put as much faith in him as others seem to be doing. Lets take and examine, for example, the following words that Ron Paul spoke a few days ago:
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize,we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without
looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the
world combined.”……Ron Paul
If you listen closely to Ron Paul and the things that he’s calling for, those things diametrically oppose what the war mongers of the Republican party support. By the way, I include Sarah Palin as part of the TAKE US TO WAR PARTY. To me, it seems like Beck fits in with the praisers God and pass the ammunition hypocrites who are going to take America into yet another war.
Sarah Palin is going to run for the position of dictator in 2012. Her opponent—Ron Paul or somebody like him—will run in 2012 as a genuine constitutionalist. Now, if Beck is the real deal and not just another religious hypocrite who talks about the constitution, then he’ll support somebody like Ron Paul.
I’ve commented many times on this very blog that Sarah Palin is power hungry and that’s what motivates her. She’s nothing like George Washington. Palin wants power, and she wants it bad…….so lets see who Beck, Hannidy, O’reilly, and the rest of the Fox News line up supports in 2012…..That is if we even make it that far before the oligarchy leads America into the next great war as a means of stimulating the economy and diverting attention away from the real issues.
Don’t get me wrong, I respect Mr. Beck. I just don’t think that he’s the complete package. I don’t think a dozen Becks and Palins combined would equal one Washington.
I think you’re missing the significance. Half a million people, at a minimum, were there. My dad, a vet, was among them by the way. Sharpton drew, what, three thousand at most. Take heart, Sharpton and his GAVEC cronies are outnumbered. Sharpton’s rally drew 0.004 times the number Beck’s did. I don’t think we can call Sharpton’s numbers significant.
It’s more and more clear that the “major” media outlets are gasping for breath. Their “shameful” coverage is just more proof of this. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, thank God for the Internet. When you consider the ways the Internet has tripped up those in power, I can see why libertarian writers in the latter half of the 20th century, with no knowledge of the Internet despaired that we were entering a new totalitarian state to rival that of Goebbels.
If it had not been for slavery, Al Sharpton would be sitting around a campfire tonight in a loin cloth.
Do you think Mr. Beck is ever going to come to the conclusion and admit that our foreign policy and our monstrous military, and the taxes that support them (all taxes as well! END THE FED!!! Abolish the IRS!!!) are wrong, and we as a nation must first come into conformity to God’s (libertarian!) will before true honor can be achieved?
He consistently ignores the truth of the atrocities of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln and their ilk, and what our government has been doing since the turn of the last century, especially when the Fed and the IRS were instigated in 1913. Yeah, Wilson’s a bad guy — but so was Lincoln; yeah, so are the Progressives. But WHY?
It’s not just their Progressive Darwinian social engineering; it’s also their unholy marriage of government with monopolistic big business and our worship of military might, and the “preservation of the union” at any cost, in defiance of the Founders’ intent and the clear statements of such in the ninth and especially the tenth amendments in the Bill of Rights. What is up with that?
I keep waiting and waiting for it to finally dawn on him, and I am continually disappointed. For lo, these many years, beginning with CNN!
Until these issues are dealt with head-on instead of continually skirted in the name of “patriotism” honor cannot be “restored,” and in fact I believe God is weeding out the true believers in His Son and those who pay lip service. And forgive me, as long as Mr. Beck remains blind to these most important issues, he is merely another cog turning that millstone.
I don’t believe Mr. Beck is “insincere.” But on the other hand, he is presuming to preach Judeo-Christian principles, precepts, and even salvation to the nation, all under the umbrella of his CHOSEN religious cult.
When interviewed during the 2008 presidential election campaign cycle, he was asked simple questions about his religion’s teachings on certain things. He declined to comment on those things, directing the interviewer to consult one of the Elders of the church on “theological” issues. One of those theological issues he said he didn’t know enough to address and explain was salvation.
I think that is disingenuous. Now he’s presuming to tell the whole nation how to be saved in Christ.
WHAT?!
And that this is the only way to “restore honor” to the country.
Of course the MSM couldn’t cover it; they have no frame of reference, they don’t have the faintest idea what he’s talking about or its practical application. And besides, they don’t want to hear it.
He’ll soon be called a Jesus freak; only he’s not. Not unless he deliberately decides to educate himself in the real canons of his chosen religion, and realize they are NOT those of the truth and doctrines of Jesus Christ of the Bible, but of Joseph Smith and of the Book of Mormon.
When/if he does that, and renounces not only Progressives, socialists, Communists, fascists and collectivism, but ALSO the military and our empirical, aggressive, meddling, arrogant foreign policy and the illegal taxes that supports all of it.
Where’s his study of history on all that? Where’s his study on libertarianism, an honest compare and contrast to neocon “conservatism”? Why hasn’t he had the courage to admit our warmongering, and denounce it as wrong, and against God? Why hasn’t he studied just war theory and educated “us” on that, and pointed out that no American war with the possible exception — if you close your eyes to the inflation, conscription, and other coercive measures to force people to fight — of the Revolutionary War, and indeed no war in history, has ever come close to meeting even one or two of the criteria for a just war?!
Even Jesus said you are either for Him or against Him. There is no middle ground. And He brooks no associations for any cause with anything not of Him.
Samson was born and consecrated a Nazarite, but made a point of flouting his holy dedication and defying God in everything. God had to blind him and strip him of all his pretensions before He could use him. And Samson didn’t come out of it alive.
So . . .
I have been a fan of Robert Ringer’s for many years and I believe his book “Restoring the American Dream” was far ahead of its time in predicting the decline of America. It’s still a great read. However, I was somewhat surprised to see Robert heap such praise upon Glenn Beck while failing to mention that Glenn Beck has made it clear that he is pro-war and was in support of the Iraq war, and as far as I can tell in favor of Israel attacking Iran. Robert, how do these beliefs in any way support your Libertarian philosophy, and doesn’t this give tacit support to the idea of American empire?
Cathy, So……..in my opinion you made some excellent points; Many of which I wanted to make myself.
Lets all hope that Mr. Beck continues to educate himself about the Military Industrial Complex, The Take Us To War Party, and The Dishonorable Fake-Capitalists (Like the phony Alan Greenspan). And lets not forget about the modern day rent-a-slave trade and the off-shoring of American jobs that so few of these dishonorable hypocrites even bother to mention. Why doesn’t Beck invite Dr. Paul Craig Roberts ( The father of Reaganomics) on his program? Why doesn’t Mr. Beck allow men such as Dr. Roberts, who is far more experienced and educated than Beck or Palin combined, to tell it like it is???…..Dr. Roberts is a man of honor and so is Dr. Paul and so are many others that Beck and Fox News seem to ignore.
I’ll tell you who I’d like to see on Fox News—–Alex Jones, that’s who. Let Mr. Jones and Mr. Beck go at it in a head to head and a man to man no holds barred hour long debate……Let Judge Andrew Napolitano be the moderator. Then right after Mr. Jones gets through with Mr. Beck, then Bring out Sarah Palin and put her up against Mr. Jones. Lets all find out who the true barracuda really is..We’ll call the debate: RESTORING BRAVERY.
Mr. Ringer, I think you make a mistake by criticizing Geraldo for what appears to be a bias that he wasn’t as aggressive as fully right-leaning interviewer/host might have been. That’s great if you simply want to preach to the converted.
Geraldo is probably one of the few regulars on Fox News that draws an audience across a wider range, if not more liberal. And I saw the entire episode and here is my view: He is a long time friend of Sharpton, however he still pressed the guy to acknowledge the success of Beck’s rally. Given the milk-toast answers from Sharpton, Geraldo even claimed aloud that Sharpton was being unfair and had an agenda for not admitting what everyone else could see. Geraldo was also quite respectful of Dr. Alveda King.
So, is it that you only prefer partisan shout fests where any opposing views are denigrated and refuted by incessant over-talking? There is so much of that now, watching this particular show was refreshing to me. As another person who commented here noted, thinking peopled learned what they needed to know about Sharpton without all the emotional and partisan noise.
I agree with your analysis of Beck. I would add that he needs to be very careful, and some comments here are indicators for why, in my view. Beck I though has always positioned his effort as being about principles and not any one person or few persons. And the more everyone focuses on him and not where he wants their attention to go, it gives his adversaries more leverage in their personal assaults.
Perhaps a better way to say it – he is only trying to be a messenger of other peoples’ thoughts and on certain interpretations of the country’s foundations. He also seems to want to correct the record on Christianity, but I wouldn’t put him any category currently occupied by evangelicals, preachers, priests, etc., as he isn’t ministering per se. And we all know how attacking the messenger is totally unproductive. Hence, his adversaries are mostly inept and unsuccessful at changing not only the impact of his narrative but also the minds of thinking people. So far, they are losing in the most incredible display of ” the ends justify the means”.
If many allow the narrative to be too much about Beck, it will signal the start of success for those who oppose the messages. Just my opinion.
Cathy, if you want to sit around and hold your breath until the perfect spokesperson comes along that is your business. Glen Beck is not perfect but at least he is moving in the right direction and I bless and support him for that. Oh, and by the way, your face is turning blue.
Thank you Robert for all of your great articles. I would like to comment on your last sentence of this article: “It almost tempts one to say that it’s a showdown between good and evil.”
I would like to think of it as a showdown between intelligence and stupidity, rather than good and evil. I don’t think people that support our government are evil. They may just be ignorant to the facts.