On radio Thursday, Glenn Beck told his audience that while on his way to South Africa, there was a curious incident that occurred during a planned stopover in Egypt.* But what we didn’t know yesterday is why. Now we do: it’s partly because of Hugo Chavez.
Beck told the Chavez-related story on his show Friday, and said that Chavez raised questions about Beck’s planned stop in Venezuela, and those questions were relayed to Beck during his stop in Egypt.
“I am informed by [my chief of staff] Joe that Hugo Chavez wanted a detailed itinerary of what I was planning on doing in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, and Hugo didn’t like it, and he would not allow my plane to land in Venezuela,” he explained.
Beck is planning on visiting South America as part of a special leg of a global human rights campaign.
Despite the push back from Chavez, however, Beck may have gotten the last laugh. According to him, he has “found a way” to still get his message across in the dictator’s country: via technology.*
“Hugo believes that he is going to stop people like me from speaking out and speaking their mind,” Beck said.
BECK ISSUES CALL FOR ‘HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY’ MOVEMENT; DEPARTS JERUSALEM FOR SOUTH AFRICA
Scroll down for video and links to full text of Beck’s speech and Declaration of Rights & Responsibilities
The heat of the afternoon sun in Jerusalem could not match the fervor of Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Courage” call to follow a “pillar of fire” in pursuit of the truth and wisdom.
After months of preparation, the controversial event unfolded smoothly with Beck telling the large crowd, “I have been asked: What can you teach Israel about Courage? My answer is simple. Nothing. Then they ask: Why are you coming to Israel? Because, I say: In Israel, you see courage.”
Beck described the world as “confused,” and pointed to flash points in Europe as signs of societies losing touch with philosophical moorings:
“In Europe, the great nations of the past – Greece, Italy, Spain, Britain – are falling into chaos and violence.
We have raised up a generation who cannot tell the difference between what they owe society and what society owes them.
They interviewed the rioters in England. Why, they were asked, are you stealing shoes or televisions. “Because,” the rioters said in response, “because we deserve them.”
We may think: Oh, how different are today’s youth! But the young merely imitate their parents. They have seen how the world reacts to evil – with indifference. They watch, they learn, they imitate. What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.”
Anti-Beck protests chanted from outside the Old City walls, but groups of pro-Beck Israelis countered with signs and songs of their own.
Beck challenged the live crowd and those watching on his new GBTV network to read what he is calling a Declaration of Rights & Responsibilities:
In order to continually experience life, liberty and happiness as promised, nature’s God demands obedience to His law to protect those rights.
This is where we have fallen short and therefore, in order not to lose the blessings of freedom, the people of the world must turn from the sole focus on rights, and recognize the inherent and required responsibilities that we have.
Among the responsibilities to which we must adhere to maintain our God given rights are honor, courage and vigilance.
Over time, we believe that these basic human responsibilities have been trampled, and replaced with degradation, fear and apathy.
Saying that “it didn’t take a prophet to see these things,” Beck described his growing concern that turbulent world affairs would bode ill for Israel:
“And so this year, when I saw Tunisia’s and Egypt’s rulers crack and fall and the world called it the Arab Spring, I said: Where could this be going? And behind these revolutions was a familiar force, a force that will place those nations under a new pharaoh. And that force, I said, would come up to the borders of Israel. And so it has.
We are not at the mercy of these events. We can alter the course of history. We can stand against the dangerous arc of this story.
But we need people who are willing to speak truth. We need inspiration. We need a model to follow.”
For the full text of Beck’s speech and additional video clips click here.
Beck said that at the conclusion of his speech he would leave that instant for South Africa:
“Some people call Israel an apartheid state. I reject that. And so immediately following this program I will fly to South Africa, which is where apartheid actually existed. I will broadcast from Cape Town tomorrow morning to remind the world what the evil of apartheid really looked like.
And I will learn from the people who conquered the hatred, ignorance and bigotry and who chartered a peaceful course for a new South Africa.
Then on Friday I will fly to South America to plead the case of human responsibility to a group of nearly 5,000 local leaders from all over the continent and ask them to join me in standing in defense of Israel, the Jewish people and responsibility.
Finally on Sunday, I will speak to 5,000 Americans in Dallas, Texas. I have chosen to end my week in the town where I will headquarter the charitable division of my company, Mercury One. Dedicated to the idea that one man, inspired by one God, makes a difference. This trip will end where a global moment begins.”
While Glenn Beck’s Restoring Courage event in Israel appeared to go off without a hitch to those watching, he revealed on radio Thursday that he and his team were forced to make last-minute changes because several confirmed participants faced threats, including threats on their lives.
Beck said that the choir scheduled to perform canceled just days before the finale after they were called into a meeting last Friday and told they would be dismissed, and would probably never work again, if they contributed their talents. Despite being in full support of the program, they decided that the consequences were just too great.
The choir that performed, then, was “cobbled together” after the original choir canceled on Sunday.
Several others suffered similar threats, including death threats.
“I have to tell you some of the stories that I wasn’t able to tell you before and let’s start with this,” Beck explained while broadcasting from South Africa. “Yesterday, if you watched the broadcast on GBTV, if you watched the whole event that unfolded at the Temple Mount, what you may not know is how many people canceled at the last minute, and not because they were, you know, ‘I’m not going to stand with him,’ none of that. The reason why they canceled is because they were under death threat.”
In fact, Beck revealed that an Arab participant couldn’t even sing words when he took the stage. Instead, he could only utter melodic moans — anything else could have cost him his life.
“I don’t blame them for this at all,” Beck said regarding those who decided to pull out. You can listen to him explain the threats and the changes below:
Which 2012 candidate 'STOOD WITH Israel'? Only one of the announced GOP Presidential hopefuls made the trip to Glenn Beck's three-day "Restoring Courage" event in Israel. You can see who visited the Western Wall and attended the big event HERE.
As Mediaite readers know, Glenn Beck is the undisputed king of the angry monologue. Unfortunately though (or fortunately, depending on your opinion of the man), we haven’t gotten much of it recently in this time between his Fox News and GBTV shows. However, today on his radio show, Beck let loose with a torrent of anger and frustration at an issue he described as having been going on for a few weeks now. Before he began, Beck said he would post what he was going to say online, thus forever disproving anyone who thought he was a “shill” for the Republican Party.
Considering the amount of venom he then let out towards the GOP establishment, he can consider his point made.
It all started with a conversation with Rep. Joe Walsh who described sadly the fact that House Speaker Boehner’s office had denied his and other congressmen’s requests to attend Beck Israel rally in an official capacity as a fact-finding mission. Beck maintained his composure during the call with Walsh, offering the Illinois Congressman a free GBTV membership to watch from there. However, you could hear just how frustrated he was with the whole situation as he wondered allowed if Boehner wasn’t just punishing Tea Party Republicans for not voting for his debt plan.
Then, once Walsh was off the line, Beck really got into it:
“Speaker Boehner, you should be ashamed of yourself. The Republican Party should be ashamed of themselves. They don’t have to attend my event. Let them come to our biggest ally and our only friend in the Middle East in their hour of need. They don’t have to attend my event! In fact, I’ll ban them. Does that make you happy? Let Congress come here! You should be ashamed of yourself for playing politics. That’s what it is, Boehner, and you know it. The Republican Party sickens me.”
Listen to the full segment including the conversation with Walsh below:
Yesterday I received ‘a special deal’ message from WND yesterday which included a (15-minute) clip from one of Beck’s Fox Shows on Iran and the Islamic Antichrist or 12th Imam that Ahmadinejad believes in and therefore really is at the center of what is going on in Israel and the Middle East. It is a video worth watching… for the first time or a review, so am sharing it again.
Also just a reminder that if you haven’t joined GBTV.com and aren’t already an Insider, Beck’s Event in Israel Restoring Courage is on 8.24.11 and you can watch it there. (Restoring Courage follows his successful event in Washington D.C. last summer Restoring Honor.
Last night I finished reading Governor Palin's newest book, America by Heart. It was a wonderful, encouraging, challenging read. In fact, I fear I read it too quickly and didn't let everything sink in--kind of like when you regret eating a piece of dark chocolate too quickly. I will be re-reading it soon.
I found the book almost to be like an American took a theoretical journey similar to that of Alexis de Tocqueville when he traveled throughout all of America in the early 19th century observing American culture, politics, and Founding documents. In a sense, that's what Governor Palin did when she wrote this book. She viewed America's Founding documents, speeches by Presidents like Reagan, Kennedy, and Coolidge. She spoke of American work ethic and how great joy comes through the effort of hard work, not entitlement. She wrote of issues of race and feminism. She wrote of her personal experiences with family-- the birth of her children and her relationship with her husband. She wrote of her faith--how it is both deeply personal, but also very public.
Many politicians and political leaders write about such things, but there is something different about how Governor Palin presents the message. I think it has something to do with the title--America by Heart. It wasn't America by Mind or Thoughts on American Exceptionalism; it was America by Heart. The thoughts that she put down on paper were heart-felt. They were genuine. She didn't present a long dissertation on feminism or economics, but she did present well-reasoned, heart felt thoughts on those topics. You knew that she meant every word she wrote. Her words weren't focused group tested or written for the sake of political expediency; they were written because she meant them.
During the 2008 campaign, in the nascent days of my political awareness, I decided to read Obama's book, the Audacity of Hope, and McCain's book, Faith of my Fathers, prior to election day, hoping to get a first person perspective of the two men running for president. Prior to the 2008 campaign, I'd only really seen the term,"hope", as a religious term. Particularly, I always thought of hope as described by the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see". We hope for things in the future, and things not of this world, but of eternity. Without getting too theological, suffice it to say, hope to me, was looking ahead to something, rather than viewing things in light of the present or the past.
When Obama's campaign mantra was "hope and change", what I thought about was a forward focused hope in what the country could be changed to. This is what Obama said, even a fundamental transformation of America. What America is currently is not good. There is no American exceptionalism -- at least exclusively. He was "bold" enough to hope though that America could and would be transformed to something "better". This is what separates President Obama and Governor Palin both in terms of their books and their ideology. Governor Palin's book outlines American Exceptionalism as America was in its founding and what it still is today. There isn't a hoping for a better America. That exceptional America is already here, if we choose to recognize who we are as a nation and what our Founders intended for America to be. This is why Governor Palin said at the Restoring Honor rally that we need to "fundamentally restore America".
Governor Palin sees that a great America is nothing to be hoped for because it is already here, if we choose to live like that is the truth--the audacity of American Exceptionalism.
