Glenn Beck on Glenn Beck

Controversial Fox Host Talks About Kicking Bottle, Turning Mormon and Common Sense

John Stossel explores why some seem to hate the conservative commentator.

Forbes magazine's new list of the 100 richest and most influential celebrities in America includes Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, and only one TV news personality -- Fox News' Glenn Beck.

Video: Preview of Stossel 20/20 Interview With Glenn Beck

A few years ago, not many people had heard of Glenn Beck. Nowadays, the conservative commentator seems to be everywhere. Over the past two weeks, he's performed before sold-out crowds on his comedy tour. He's had several New York Times No. 1 best-selling books (a new book, "Glenn Beck's Common Sense," is due to hit stores next week); 8 million listeners tune in each week to his radio show; and now he's the host of his own television show on Fox News.

Watch John Stossel's interview with Glenn Beck on "20/20" Friday at 10 p.m. ET.

Glenn Beck: The Drinking Years

"[My mother] was an alcoholic and a drug addict," he said. "When I hit 30, I was going down that same path."

Glenn Beck preps backstage for his Fox News talk show. Despite its weekday-afternoon time slot, normally a ratings wasteland, the show now has a bigger audience than any prime time show on cable.

(ABC News)

He believes the word "jerk" would be the kindest way to describe him at that stage.

"I fired a guy one time for bringing me the wrong kind of pen," he said remorsefully. "I was beyond a jerk.

"I hated myself. Hated myself," he admitted. "I tried for two years to stop drinking. I'd look myself in the mirror and I'd say, 'You're not an alcoholic, you don't have a problem.'"

Beck didn't admit he had a drinking problem until one morning when he was unable to remember a bedtime story he had drunkenly told his children the night before. And so, that evening, he attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

"I don't know what I expected, but you guys don't look like alcoholics," Beck recalled telling the attendees. "This lady, she must've been 70 years old. She was wearing a sweater set and pearls. She was sitting right in front of me, and she just leaned back and she said, 'Oh, honey, we're all drunks in here.'"

In typical Glenn Beck fashion, however, he didn't stop his reformation there. He became a Mormon.

"I apologize, but guys will understand this. My wife is hot and she wouldn't have sex with me until we got married, and she wouldn't marry me unless we had a religion," he said. "I'm like, ah, you've got to be kidding me! I've got to go to church for this?"

But now he says that going to church has given him the faith to ground himself, and so he's grateful to his wife. Glenn and Tania Beck have been married now for nearly 10 years, after first meeting in a parking lot.

"I was a loser at local radio and she came up to me and she said, 'Are you Glenn Beck?'" he recalled of their first meeting. "She said, 'I used to listen to you when I was in high school. Thanks for the laughs,' and then she turned around and walked away."

Beck has been called an "idiot" who engages in a lot of "crazy talk." Does it bother his wife when people have hateful things to say about her husband?

Glenn Beck: A Big Target

"If I let every single thing bother me, you know, I would have jumped off a bridge a long time ago," she said.

Glenn Beck talks with John Stossel about how he got his start in radio.

(Chris Kilmer / ABC News)

Beck has become a big target for comedians and commentators alike. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert often mocks him, and Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" once said of Beck, "Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking."

"You can get rich making fun of me. I know. I've made a lot of money making fun of me," Beck said.

Beck is also criticized for crying on television.

"Somebody get this blubbering buffoon a Kleenex!" said journalist Tina Brown on her March 31 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Others have accused Beck of faking the crying for entertainment purposes.

"I should be paid a lot more money if I were able to cry on will like that," he responded.

The criticism he receives from the media doesn't stop there. Al Franken wondered aloud on CNN whether Beck should be allowed on television. Keith Olbermann frequently names Beck the "Worst Person in the World."

Some even go as far as to charge that Beck's complaints about the government actually encourage violence.

"A man kills his own mother and nine others and turns out to have kept a hit list. And Glenn Beck is rationalizing it and blaming liberals for it," said Keith Olbermann on March 13.

But, does Beck actually encourage the anti-government violence of people like Timothy McVeigh?

"No. Timothy McVeigh was a coward," explained Beck. "Violence is the stupid way out. It'll discredit any real legitimate movement."

Beck added that most people who criticize him don't actually watch his show or listen to what he says.

Many in the media label Beck as a staunch Republican -- a label which he strongly disagrees with.

"Both parties only believe in the power of the party," he said. "Stand up. Throw off the shackles of the two-party system!"

He criticizes both parties for exercising more power than the Constitution intended and for abandoning what he considers to be common-sense ideas.

Glenn Beck: Freedom to...

"Look, the American experiment was about freedom," he explained. "Freedom. Freedom to be stupid. Freedom to fail. Freedom to succeed. Freedom to succeed.

"We just put General Motors in the hands of people who can't even run our own government," he added. "Our debt is -- just the interest -- a trillion dollars a year. You can't pay for that!"

Beck also compares himself to Howard Beale, the fictional anchorman from the 1976 film "Network" who famously exclaimed: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

"I am like Howard Beale," said Beck. "When he came out of the rain and he was like, none of this makes any sense. I am that guy."

And so Beck works constantly, on radio, TV and onstage, saying that a lot of life would be better if government -- Republicans and Democrats -- just left Americans alone.

"I believe that if we get out of people's way, the sky's the limit," he said. "The sky is the limit."

By JOHN STOSSEL and ANDREW KIRELL - June 10, 2009

Posted: Daily Thought Pad

Related Resources:

• Barbara Walters (and Whoopi) Don't Check Facts, Attack Glenn Beck Anyway…
• Glenn ambushed on 'The View'
• Bit_h_s on the View at Their Nonsense Again...
• Glenn Responds to The View Debacle
• Can Andrew Breitbart Save Hollywood?
• Progressivism – The Progressive Movement Is A Cancer That Has Slowly Infested Both Major U.S. Parties Over the Past 100 Years – (Part 1)
• Progressives dream to 'remake' America – Glenn Beck - (Part II)
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense - New Book
• An Inconvenient Book - Book

WATCH: Whoopi's Blow Up With Glenn Beck

Progressives dream to 'remake' America – Glenn Beck (Part II)

We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future
by Matthew Spalding

- Available from Amazon

GLENN: Well, I decided Fusion magazine is my monthly magazine and we decided to do a double issue. And we're doing it on progressivism. So it's a primer. So you will be able to understand what it is, that way you don't have to go out and, you know, do all the work. If you get Fusion magazine this coming month will be a whole issue with extra pages just on the progressive movement. And I have some of the best minds on the progressive movement involved. We've asked some of the best people to write on it. Matthew Spalding is one of those guys. We asked him to write on the remaking of America, which is one of my favorite phrases from Barack Obama. We're not restoring. We're not rebuilding. We're remaking America. He is author of We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future. Matthew Spalding is with us. Matthew, how are you, sir?

SPALDING: I'm fine, Glenn, how are you?

GLENN: I'm very good. Would you say that I how far off the marker do you agree with what I just said about, that is the cancer in America is the progressive movement?
SPALDING: You are absolutely right, and I think the key is if you want to there are a lot of things going on right now. It's very confusing, where are we going. If you want a framework for thinking this through, in the shorthand it's basically we live in a world where we have a battle. We're outnumbered and it's basically the founders and self evident truth and the Constitution against this idea of progressivism and liberalism, which is a complete rejection of those ideas. And what we're talking about right now is who's going to win out, what's our future, where are we going. And you've got to understand that. If you don't understand that, we're just going to go float along the river and you know what we're going to do? We're going to become Europe. We're going to be a dead culture. That's our future: Look over at Europe. That's where we're going.

GLENN: Now, the progressive movement, this is so insidious, Matthew, because it is the only ones who have ever written anything about our history, I mean, for instance, and I don't want to get into this, but Woodrow Wilson nobody knows anything about. One evil son of a bitch. And nobody knows it. Nobody really knows what the progressive movement is because they've controlled history.

SPALDING: They've written the history, that's right.

GLENN: Yeah. And so you don't see what's coming. But once you start to go in for instance, I don't know if you're familiar. Are you familiar with Philip Dru: Administrator, the novel?

SPALDING: Yes, it's written by Colonel House anonymously about a dictator.

GLENN: Look at how excited he gets, such geeks, Matthew, such geeks.

SPALDING: It's great stuff, but you are absolutely right. Once you kind of see their vision, these guys wanted to fundamentally remake America and they set about doing it, and the beauty of reading these old books from these old guys is that back in those days they were very clear about what they were doing. Today progressive thinkers are very

July/Aug 2009 Issue

The Founders vs. The Progressives

GLENN: Shady.

SPALDING: Cagey, right? So you go back and see what they said. When they are clear, kind of tells you what's going on here because Barack Obama studied this stuff. He says so in one of his two autobiographies. He studied the progressive and Herbert Croley. He called himself a progressive. He knows what he's doing.

GLENN: Yeah. It's amazing because, Matthew, back around the turn of the century they I mean, this is the time when they were saying, you know, Mussolini, he's a good guy! This is the new wave of government.

SPALDING: That's right.

GLENN: And so there was no shame. But as soon as the idea of a dictator went awry, they went underground and then they hid it. But isn't this, Matthew, when you Philip Dru: Administrator is a novel from Wilson's time, one of Wilson's advisors. This guy played a huge role in the making of America, or the remaking of America.

SPALDING: Right.

GLENN: And it is the czar system. It's what Obama's doing with the car industry right now.

SPALDING: That's right. That particular novel suggests that this guy becomes dictator and he essentially imposes what was the 1912 platform of the Republican Party which was the progressive party at the time. There's amazing parallels today. As a matter of fact, if you look at all the things we're talking about today, healthcare reform, national service, taking over car companies and banks, all of these things have amazingly deep parallels back to the progressive movement. It's as if their agenda was written for them back in the 1920s.

GLENN: I contend, Matthew, I contend that it was. I contend that everything that is happening now, this is that there is no and I don't know anybody who has done this. Maybe you do. I contend that if you go back and you start with Barack Obama and you look at who's influenced him and who influenced them and who influenced them, you will go back to these authors, the same people. It's the same group of people. They've been educating each other and moving it along little by little, bit by bit.

SPALDING: Well, just to fill in the blanks very quickly, you had the progressive movement at the beginning. They kind of get pushed back from World War I. They come back again the New Deal. Very clearly they understood that the New Dealers understood themselves as progressives. That Peters out, but it comes back in spades in the Great Society. The roots of the Great Society are clearly in the progressives. They talk about creating a great society. That kind of falls back. You get Reagan coming into kind of get us back on track. Obama clearly sees himself, he always talks about himself as carrying on tradition of the Great Society but especially FDR. But behind that intellectually is the progressive movement. Liberalism comes into America in waves, one, two, three, and now we're in a fourth wave. This is an agenda over time to fundamentally remake America and we've got to understand that.

GLENN: So Matthew, the president says we are going to remake America. I have been ringing the bell since his inauguration when he said those words, and listen to what he is saying! He again is I think not as cagey as others are. He will use the language of the progressive movement from the early 20th century. He says them which, to me if you understand, it's code language. If you know what he's talking about, you know, "Oh, dear God, I know what's coming."

SPALDING: Well, it's also the fact that I see Obama as he's very intelligent, he knows what he's doing. I think he's the most serious liberal progressive political figure in America since FDR, and he means to seriously change American politics is a serious fundamentally realigned way which will determine a large segment of our future.
GLENN: I tell you I think FDR had some restraint. I don't know if it was personal restraint, but he had the opportunity to become dictator and he didn't. And I think he was a bad dude. Don't get me wrong. But I think Wilson I think Obama does not have that restraint. I think this administration is

SPALDING: He doesn't need to because he can know build on the successes of the past, right? It's completely open to him. No longer is there a court to check him. No longer is there Republican opposition which is willing to stand up to him, seriously in an intellectual and political way. And no longer do we have the kind of self governing spirited population that sees what it is. I mean, we've got a lot of work here. He's got an open playing field right now.

GLENN: So Matthew, I mean, this is why I did the Fusion issue and had people like you and Jonah Goldberg and everybody else write about the progressives in a historic sort of way and tie it to today. What is if you could get one message out to America, and they're like, "I don't know anything about progressives. I mean, they do auto insurance and I guess a few candidates." What is it that you would say, "You must understand this one thing"?

SPALDING: If I can I would say it's two things. One is a complete and utter intellectual and moral rejection of the principles of the founding, complete relativism. There is no truth. That's one thing. The second thing

GLENN: Wait, wait. Before you move on from that.

SPALDING: Yeah.

GLENN: Explain that a little bit because I've heard that before but until I read the words of the progressive movement where they dismantle, where they said forget about the Declaration of Independence, forget about parts of the Constitution, the preamble of the Constitution and forget about the, you know, that it's a living document. Until I actually read what they said, I didn't really understand that. Can you give an example here?

SPALDING: The whole notion of limited government depends upon us having rights granted to us by God that we each possess. If there is no moral truth behind that, there is nothing that limits government. That's what progressivism means. What they said very clearly because they went over and studied with these really bad German philosophers and they came back and they had discovered the new truth that there was no permanent enduring timeless truth, no self evident truths as it says in the declaration. Carl Becker, one of the great historians wrote to ask whether the declaration is true or not is a meaningless question. They are relativists at their core. All truths are merely relative to one another. You like ice cream, I like eating small children, all right? It doesn't matter. Once you've accepted that philosophical assumption, there are no limits on government, the Constitution is living, the president can do whatever he wants. None of this matters.

GLENN: So it's really not

SPALDING: All for the sake of progress: Progress will save us.

GLENN: It's not that they hate God or they, you know, they love pedophiles. It's that if they can destroy the concept of God or if they can destroy the self evident truth that you're endowed by rights, then they grab control.

SPALDING: Because there's nothing left to prevent them from doing so.
GLENN: Right.

SPALDING: It's not that they want to do these things but they are impelled to do them because there's no other truth out there.

GLENN: Right.

SPALDING: And if there's no truth, we must be completely tolerant, we must be completely equal. The only way we can do it is we must have government to make us do it.

GLENN: So in other words, again when you say this, I'm hoping that a lot of people will remember the words of the president where he said, "I don't want to take over these car companies. I don't want to do this."

SPALDING: Right.

GLENN: I was left with this job. Now I have to do it, and the only way, the only entity that can save these things is the government.

SPALDING: Is the government, that's right. And when he says remake America, you have to understand that what he means is he wants to get rid of, put back on the history books the always old notions of self evident truths and limited government to the Constitution. That's old school. He wants to get rid of that. In its place we have this new administrative government, and a lot of this culminates, and this is a key aspect of this, a lot of it culminates in Barack Obama himself. His narcissism, the notion that he is kind of the culmination of history, right? That itself is a very progressive concept. That's what Woodrow Wilson thought, right? These great historical figures are absolutely key. And that's what Barack Obama sees himself as. He is leading us into the future.

GLENN: If I'm not mistaken, Woodrow Wilson went so far as saying that God cannot be stopped and that America, when they voted down progressivism and they voted down the League of Nations, et cetera, et cetera, that these all, all these things came from God and he knew it, and God would not be stopped.

SPALDING: That's right. The early progressives were actually, interestingly enough very much influenced by a religious concept. But their religious concept is not God in the (inaudible) sense in any way, it really means history, kind of in a, God takes on this notion of the invisible forces of history taking us into the future. And you need somebody to lead us there. And so Woodrow Wilson was the great leader, the same way that Barack Obama being perfectly progressive is the one who, he has the vision to see where we're going. And so only he can lead us there. That's the beauty of it.

GLENN: Okay. Hold on just a second, Matthew. I appreciate it. Matthew Spalding. In Fusion magazine Matthew writes a great article on the remaking of America, keyword "Remaking" of America. Jonah Goldberg is also writing for it. R. J. Pestritto who is this really smart dude, professor. Where is he a professor of?

SPALDING: Hillsdale college.

GLENN: Hillsdale. Really smart guy. You can get an expanded edition of Fusion magazine by call 888 Glenn Beck or go to GlennBeck.com. It is next month's issue.

Related Resources:

• Progressivism – The Progressive Movement Is A Cancer That Has Slowly Infested Both Major U.S. Parties Over the Past 100 Years – (Part 1)
• American Progressivism – Part One
• American Progressivism – Part Two
• American Progressivism – Part Three
• American Progressivism – Parts Four and Five
• How Obama’s Socialism Works
• California is Liberalism's "Canary in the Coal Mine"
• Progressive Taxation Was Never About Fairness
• American capitalism gone with a whimper - Pravda
• The Weimar Solution
• American Progressivism – Book
• Liberal Fascism - Book
• One-Party Classroom - Book
• Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism... – Book
• Expelled – DVD

Posted: Daily Thought Pad

Progressivism – The Progressive Movement Is A Cancer That Has Slowly Infested Both Major U.S. Parties Over the Past 100 Years

When the Founders established this great nation, America was in the business of freedom, liberty and justice. Today, we are in the business of banking, automobiles, energy and healthcare. For over 100 years, Progressivism has been insidiously woven into American culture. The government is getting bigger and our rights are getting smaller.

If you’re like us and want to put the brakes on all this ‘progress,’ then check out the next issue of Glenn Beck’s Fusion Magazine. We call on experts like Jonah Goldberg, RJ Pestritto, Bradley Watson and Matthew Spalding to explain not only how Progressives have steered us away from our founding values but what we can do to return the Constitution to its rightful glory.

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

So, remind yourselves of what the Founders intended for America. Remind yourselves of your individual rights. Subscribe now to Glenn Beck’s Fusion magazine, and next month he focuses on the Progressive Movement.

Subscribe Now

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Trivia Answer: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Read excerpts from American Progressivism on this website (see links below) and related subjects and then get this followed by Liberal Fascism. If you have wondered why so often, the candidates from both parties seem to be the same… these sources are your answer.

It really is time for the American voter to vet their candidates, to insist that the media do their jobs instead of practicing politician and candidate worship, and to become the lucky citizens of what was and what can again be… the greatest County and Democracy – a republic built on capitalism, free-trade, small government and individual rights, the rights of the people.

But as Thomas Jefferson said,

“I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.”

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

“I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.”

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

And an informed, educated and involved citizenry is what is missing today. We have allowed and participated in the dumbing down of our society while the disciples of the ‘ American Progressive Movement’ have worked feverishly to steal and re-engineer the Country that was left to us, the American People, by the Founding Fathers.

I watched an interview with Secretary Hillary Clinton the other night and number of times she used the words progressive and progressives resonated with me.

Related Resources:

• American Progressivism – Part One
• American Progressivism – Part Two
• American Progressivism – Part Three
• American Progressivism – Parts Four and Five
• How Obama’s Socialism Works
• California is Liberalism's "Canary in the Coal Mine"
• Progressive Taxation Was Never About Fairness
• American capitalism gone with a whimper - Pravda
• The Weimar Solution
• American Progressivism – Book
• Liberal Fascism - Book
• One-Party Classroom - Book
• Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism... – Book
• Expelled - DVD