Best of the Program | Guests: Kevin Williamson & Lisa Paige | 8/5/19

Hey, it's Stu in for Glenn on the Glenn Beck program today.

We have, I mean, a lot going on.

Obviously, the weekend stuff that

was going on is devastating, and we go through all the truth there, including something that is absolutely not being

talked about in the media coverage, revolving around the shootings.

The motivations for the El Paso shooting being thrown completely on Trump, on white supremacism in general, there is another major part of that story that the media is not telling you.

We'll get to that today.

Also, talk to Pat Gray about the shootings, get his perspective, and also Kevin Williamson.

Kevin Williamson, he has a new book out, The Smallest Minority, Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics.

We'll talk to him.

He gets in on what's going on with the shooting, but also just kind of generally what's going on with the country when it comes to the mob mentality.

We will also take on as many arguments as we can think of that you're going to be seeing in your Facebook feed about gun control over the next few days.

And a special guest, my wife, Lisa Page,

tells her story about, and I think this is the way most people experience the news these days, getting in fights on social media with all their friends about it.

All that on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

Well, we've

crossed over

lines that that I didn't know could be crossed.

I have watched the media for a very long time.

I've watched people in Washington, politicians, for a very

long time.

And

I thought

I had seen the worst of them.

And every time I think that,

I find something brand new

that they do that crosses yet another line.

This weekend's coverage of the two mass shootings in the United States this weekend

was so incredibly horrific.

I am almost without words to describe it.

Of course, you know by now in El Paso, mass shooting.

In Dayton, Ohio, another mass shooting.

They are, you know, horrible, horrible incidents.

And yes, I must say, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims.

I know that's not cool anymore to say, you know, honestly, my thoughts, what do you care about my thoughts?

Prayers are actually important.

If you happen to be a person of faith, here's something to let you know.

If you're one of these people that is not a person of faith, you might think that prayers are just meaningless.

And that's certainly your right to do that.

But it's one of the most important things that someone of faith can actually offer in a situation like this.

So when you demean it, you're demeaning the most important things that everyone you're talking about believes in.

Just so you understand what you're doing.

And we've actually crossed the line there too with politicians, because remember, over the past few months, we've seen this thing creep up where they say thoughts and prayers are not enough.

Thoughts and prayers are not enough.

And

okay, I mean, I don't understand why you feel the need to point that out.

I guess you think it's cool.

It gets you some new donations.

But we've crossed the line now to this from Kamala Harris's weekend.

No more thoughts and prayers.

So no longer are you allowed to think about these incidents.

And no longer are you absolutely, you're certainly not able to pray for the victims of these incidents or the families of the victims of these incidents.

Don't think about them and don't pray for them.

Kamala told you not to.

No more thoughts and prayers.

Well, I mean, they've mastered the no more thoughts part of that because they certainly don't seem to be using their noggin.

There is very little thinking going on when it comes to this, but I want to get to something very specific because if you were reading the reports about this this weekend,

you'll notice, of course, that the Dayton shooting was basically not talked about.

And the reason for that is there's no real political use.

You know,

you look at the 2020 candidates, and we'll play them all for you here.

What they're doing is trying to find the best way to use the dead bodies from the weekend to move their polls 1%,

2%.

Who can come out with the coolest, most viral reaction to these horrible tragedies to try to move up the scale of the 25 candidates by one or two?

It's despicable.

It's completely despicable.

But what they have done and what the media has done, it goes beyond that this weekend.

You heard this line in probably every single report about the white nationalist manifesto that went on.

And I want to quickly, before we take a one-minute break, say this.

I am completely with the Blazes

policy of not naming these victims.

I've been very outspoken about that.

If you know this, I was one of the people behind the scenes asking for this policy beforehand.

And I also would extend that to talking about their motivations, generally speaking.

I think you should probably know generally what they are, but focusing too much on a manifesto, I think, is a really bad idea.

This is what they want.

But because of what the media has done this weekend, I want to give you at least one paragraph of this manifesto because they are,

you know, frankly, they are lying to you about it.

They are lying to you about the entire thing, and you need to know the details of it.

So here is the one line you heard everywhere this weekend.

If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.

Obviously, in the context of all the reporting with much quotes from the entire manifesto, you would take that

to mean if we can get rid of Hispanic people, right,

then the white way of life will flourish.

That is sort of the reasoning of this guy, and there's certainly a lot of that in his manifesto.

But I want to take a 60-second break, and on the other side, tell you what comes immediately before that in the same paragraph.

Back in 60 seconds.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.

And every single article that I think I read about these shootings.

And it is part of the manifesto.

Now, you will hear all these candidates specifically blaming Trump for these shootings.

Beto O'Rourke explicitly did it this weekend.

He's from El Paso.

He said Trump is a white nationalist

and he is responsible for this shooting.

His racism is the one leading to the violence.

President Trump is responsible for this violence from Corey Booker.

We'll play you the quotes coming up.

I don't want to run out of time here, though.

Several of these candidates did the same thing.

The blame is on President Trump.

Why?

Because in the manifesto, it does reference the dislike for immigration,

the dislike for

illegal immigration, the idea that many people would be coming across the border and invading.

That was a big thing that you saw.

People talking about how Trump said this looks like an invasion, and this guy says it looks like an invasion.

This is Trump's fault.

So let me give you this paragraph from the manifesto.

Again, it ends with this.

If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.

Obviously, in context, what that means is that white people can have a more sustainable, flourishing life if we get rid of all these Mexicans.

Here is the paragraph: The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life.

However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of the country.

The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations.

Does this sound like Donald Trump to you?

Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly over-harvesting resources.

Is this Donald Trump, or is it anything you could have heard from any of the 25 candidates running for the presidency

in the Democratic Party?

Could this not be said by Jay Inslee?

This has been a problem for decades, going back to the manifesto.

For example, shamelessly overharvested.

This, excuse me, this phenomenon is brilliantly portrayed in the decades-old classic, the Lorax.

Watersheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted.

Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil drilling operations.

Consumer culture is creating thousands of tons of unnecessary plastic waste

and electronic waste and recycling to help

slow this down is almost non-existent.

You see, he's very upset that there's not enough recycling going on just like Donald Trump.

We're harvesting resources just like Donald Trump.

He's very upset at the corporations heading the destruction of our environment, just like Donald Trump.

Now, when Mick Mulvaney went on TV this weekend to try to defend the president, he brought up the fact that this

maniac, who we will not name, said, Well, all my ideas predate Trump.

It's not Trump's fault, which is true.

He does say that.

But this is, to me, much more important that people understand.

He goes on after the

we're not recycling enough commentary to say that urban sprawl creates inefficient cities, which unnecessarily destroy millions of acres of land.

We even use God knows how many trees worth of paper towels just to wipe water off our hands.

Everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn't willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience.

The government is unwilling to tackle these issues beyond empty promises because they are owned by corporations.

Was that a quote from Elizabeth Warren or the manifesto of the El Paso shooter?

Which one was it?

Do you know?

If I were to just give you that out of context, who said that?

Certainly wouldn't be Donald Trump as your guess, would it?

Corporations that also like immigration because more people means a bigger market for their products.

I just want to say that I love the people of this country, but GD, most of you all are too stubborn to change your lifestyle.

So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people using resources.

And here's where the media picks it up.

If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.

Do

you

believe the media is this horrible?

I do this for a living.

This is my stupid job to come on this radio station you're listening to or this podcast that you're listening to and blab about how bad the media does every single day.

And it's easy to find examples of it.

But it has been an exclusive focus.

There's a massive op-ed from the New York Times today that we can go through.

There are dozens of articles in the Times.

Every candidate that came out on record is saying basically the same thing, that it's Donald Trump's fault.

The media is a concert.

They're all playing the same note, though.

And that note is: it's Donald Trump's fault that the shooting went on.

It's his rhetoric that leads to these things.

If you want to find a balanced source, they'll say something like, well, look, you can't blame Donald Trump, but he's creating an environment in which this stuff can flourish.

Well, what the hell is this?

Listen to the candidates on stage.

They are telling you that people like Donald Trump and corporations are killing you, killing your children, using

things like excess plastic waste, not enough recycling, ruining our water.

The environment is under attack by the American consumer, and we must do something to stop it, or our way of life will not be able to be sustained.

That is the unquestioned truth from every single Democrat and basically every media source available in America today.

Now, it's one thing to completely ignore the part of the manifesto that disagrees with your narrative because that's what a lot of the media has done here.

They just say, you know what?

You know what?

I got to say, look, it's all about Trump.

It's all about immigration.

That's what he's talking about.

We're not going to link to it now because we don't want to give him attention.

That's our reasoning.

We're not going to link to it.

But

trust us, here's a bunch of quotes from it that all point to the white supremacy thing.

Yet here he is outlining in detail every argument.

You could say the same thing about Elizabeth Warren.

She's talking about corporate consumerism destroying our nation, victimizing innocent people.

Jay Inslee is talking about how the environment is being ruined and people like

Donald Trump and

big corporations are victimizing you and destroying our way of life.

He's quoting from their campaign platforms.

It's one thing to ignore it, it's another step beyond that.

To use a quote from that paragraph and still not mention the environmentalist part of his manifesto.

They're quoting from the same paragraph

and acting as if that information does not exist.

Beyond,

beyond horrible, beyond anything I have ever seen before in the media.

Let's play some of the clips for you.

Here is, let's start with Beto O'Rourke because, look, Betto O'Rourke is in a massive amount of desperation.

He needs something to go his way.

And he's decided, you know what?

There's a bunch of people suffering.

So let's use that.

That's a good way to rise in the polls.

Here is Beto O'Rourke talking about Trump being a white nationalist.

Do you think President Trump is a white nationalist?

Yes, I do.

And again, from some of the record that I just recited to you, the things that he has said, both as a candidate and then as the President of of the United States, this cannot be open for debate.

And you, as well as I, have a responsibility to call that out to make sure that the American people understand what is being done in their name by the person who holds the highest position of public trust in this land.

So

not even, it's okay to suggest it.

There can't be a debate about it.

You can't disagree.

There is absolutely, look,

there's no evidence that Donald Trump is a white nationalist.

Is he occasionally insensitive when it comes to racial issues?

Probably.

Probably true.

Does he say the wrong thing sometimes?

Yeah, probably true.

Is he a white nationalist?

Does he have a white nationalist ideology?

You know, it's hard to, I think, make an argument that Donald Trump has a particularly well-defined ideology of any sort.

He believes in a few things really strongly.

Things like trade protectionism that he's believed in his entire life, ever since he's been in the public eye.

There are things like the border that he came to later in life, but has been pretty consistent in this run of president since he announced his candidacy.

He's been strong on the border, has been trying to do that pretty outwardly.

But the idea that he is any, there's any evidence that he has a developed white supremacist ideology is completely insane.

It is not true.

Betto O'Rourke knows it's not true.

Here is Betto talking about Trump's racism leading to violence.

He is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country, and it does not just offend our sensibilities.

It fundamentally changes the character of this country, and it leads to violence.

It leads to violence.

I mean, again, do you think Betto,

it's his district.

It's at least his area.

Do you think he bothered to read the manifesto?

Do you think that we could, does he know that we could go into his platform and do the exact same thing to him?

Does he know it?

Does he care?

Because he knows the media is is not going to do it to him.

The media is not going to say, hey, Betto O'Rourke and Jay Inslee and Kamala Harris, you know what?

We're seeing a lot of your rhetoric in his manifesto.

Do you want to comment on that?

Is that fair?

Well, of course it's not fair.

Of course it's not fair.

Just like it's not fair to blame Donald Trump.

You don't.

This is a crazy idea.

And I've developed this over a long, long season.

I've been thinking about this one for a while.

And I want you to see.

I'm going to run it by you, see what you think.

Maybe the person who pulls the trigger should be responsible for the murders.

Now, look, the show's really short if we all agree on that one.

I got to tell you, this three-hour thing, filling in for Glenn today,

I'd have to go, and we might be talking NFL by hour two.

Because I don't, I would not be able to keep this one going if we all agree on it.

But I thought it would be an interesting concept if we blamed the perpetrator of the crime for the crime.

I thought we could go down that road.

We don't blame whatever politician we don't like for the crime.

Instead, we blame the person who actually committed the crime for the crime.

It's an approach occasionally used by law enforcement.

That's kind of how they look at it.

We've got a legal system that our founders put together that put the

squarely the blame for a a crime on the shoulders of the person who committed it, not family members, not their children, not their brothers, not their fathers, not the person that they share general agreement with on one section of a politician's policy,

and not the person who also agrees we don't recycle enough, or we're over-harvesting resources, or that corporations are the massive ill destroying our nation.

No, no, we don't blame them.

We blame the person who actually committed the crime.

Crazy idea.

Let me know what you think.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn.

And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

888727 and back is the phone number.

We go to Dave in Washington.

Hey, Dave.

Hey, Stu.

This is why I subscribe to the Blaze.

I've been on the road since 3 o'clock this morning, and I've listened to CNN, to Fox and Friends.

I listened to a little bit of Breitbart, and I hear from you what's really about.

And I just, I want to thank you guys because half the time I'm not getting everything, but to get it from you guys, I just want to thank you.

Dave, I appreciate that, man.

I mean it's a lot.

Thanks a lot.

Blazetv.com slash Glenn, promo code Glenn.

Love to have you subscribe as well.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

In the New York Times today, there's a op-ed from James Comey, and it's entitled, Mr.

President, Please Take a Stand Against Racism.

This is what you've heard basically non-stop, that the president needs to condemn in the strongest terms racism.

Well,

if that's actually what the request was, the president just did that in

incredibly explicit terms, condemned racism, said the ideology of hate has no place here, said that

the internet was a big source of this, and he wants to go after it.

Going after, he said, we will not be powerless in trying to stop this ideology.

And he condemned racism in the strongest terms.

You've probably heard him do it in.

So, I mean, if that was actually a real request, it has been fulfilled.

I suspect that the goalposts will be moved on this one, and now there will be, well, why aren't you doing X, Y, and Z?

There was a six-part plan the president outlined in response to these shootings.

Talked about the DOJ looking for early warning signs for people being radicalized and potentially turning into shooters.

He's talking about involving big tech companies and trying to detect these things early.

That was one.

Two, wanted to stop the glorification of violence in our society.

He cited the video games that have been cited by a lot of conservatives and usually are after shootings

and the media's glorification in general of these shootings.

Talked about mental health treatment and potential confinement if someone seems to be a high risk.

The only sort of gun law he mentioned or one surrounding the gun debate would be the red flag laws.

This is a

extreme risk protection.

It's a program we've talked about before and it exists in several states.

Basically, if someone if a lot of people around somebody are saying, this guy is in a major problem, here's the evidence that there can be some process to at at least temporarily take away their weapons if they are deemed to be a massive threat.

And step six,

I guess step six was step five, excuse me, the federal death penalty.

He wants to make that come back.

He'd already talked about that already.

And bringing in the opportunity to kill people

in a federal sense, which obviously the states already have their own laws on that.

And he talked about doing last, was the all ideas that will actually work.

That was interesting in the way he phrased actually,

the emphasis on actually, meaning don't bring me the same old crap you do over and over again after these shootings that aren't going to affect them.

He talked about his past accomplishments with school shootings and with the hope of trying to get something bipartisan done.

And we can always talk about whether that's a good idea.

Bipartisan action sometimes sounds better than it is in moments of national stress.

We'll get into that in a moment.

Let's take a 60-second break, and we'll give you one more quick review before we get to the bottom of the hour.

We have Kevin Williamson coming up here in just a little while, and he's going to react to the shooting as well.

He's got his new book out called The Smallest Minority.

It plays into, it really ties in well with the conversation going on today.

A couple things I want to give you quickly.

How much time do we have?

We're about a minute.

The president brought up his ban of bump stocks, and that is interesting.

It's obviously used as a positive here.

I do not agree that it's a positive.

I believe that it is an entirely unconstitutional thing that the president has done.

And we talked about that in depth at the time.

You can't just ban things when it comes to firearms in this country.

He's been able to do it.

I do believe it will go up and be challenged in the courts and

potentially be overturned eventually.

It's not that I care about bump stocks, certainly never going to buy one.

But

this is

an incredibly slippery slope we're talking about here.

And I don't believe it should have been allowed.

There's also reporting in Tim Alberta's new book.

This is following the Steve Scalise shooting.

It says the only unusual part of Trump's response to the Scalise shooting was his fixation and discussions with doctors at the hospital and later with Scalise himself on the size of the bullet.

There was also the question he posed to friends and aides in the days following the shooting.

Quote, should we do gun control?

The president asked.

Steve can lead the way.

He's got credibility now, end quote.

You know, the defense of the Second Amendment has never been central to Donald Trump's candidacy, per se.

He's had a, I would say, a really good record when it comes to someone like Gorsuch, who I feel very confident in his backing there.

So far, he's holding the line on this.

I think the phrasing that he said in that statement, the way he emphasized the word actually when he said, I will look at all ideas that will actually work, was important.

The president and his administration seem to be holding the line on this.

It gets tough sometimes, but this is when it's most important to have principles.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, called Kevin Williamson one of the most talented conservative writers in America.

He also said, He's not one of the most talented conservative writers in America.

He's one of the most talented writers in America.

High praise that could only be followed up just a few days later with, and that's why he can't work here.

Kevin Williamson is a fantastic writer.

You know his work from National Review and The Atlantic for like three days, and he joins us now.

His new book is called The Smallest Minority, Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics.

Welcome to the show, Kevin.

Hey, how are you?

Pretty good.

It was an interesting weekend and speech from President Trump.

Do you have any reaction as to what

the day's events are, where the day's events are taking us?

Well, I guess my only reaction would be from Isaiah, and woe unto them who call evil good.

I think that we are at a moment in our national history in which we are almost entirely without moral and intellectual leadership.

I resist the urge to put the President at the center of national life, but it's natural that in times like this, people would be looking to him for some clarity and direction, at least so far as policy and such things go.

That, of course, is lacking because he's a man of no principles and can't really provide clarity for that reason.

So

it's a terrible scene.

You know, I live here in Dallas where the El Paso shooter was from this area.

And I think that

there's a great deal of sadness and frustration here over that.

Yeah,

it's really rough.

And I, you know, it's one of those things where it's dominating the news coverage today, and it's important to talk about it.

But I do want to kind of transition to the book.

I think, you know, there is a natural transition here in that, you know, probably the gun debate is potentially the most tribal thing that goes on in our politics.

I mean, you see this immediately after the shooting.

People don't even take time to even understand how many people have been lost before they're saying either it's about video games or whatever it is on the right or on the left, it's about gun legislation.

Do you see that as maybe the most obvious reflection of what your book kind of covers?

Well, I think that,

yeah, it seems like the press releases are already written.

They just have a semal file waiting to go for these sorts of episodes.

But there's something else that I get to, and I don't want to trivialize

these shootings by saying that they're the same thing as these sort of social media outrage

episodes because they're not, but they have something in common, which is

we have a culture in which which certain people have come to feel that the only thing really worth having is someone's attention.

What they value above all is celebrity, fame, notoriety.

And they engage in these performative hysterics.

And these mass shootings are, in that sense,

not just acts of terrorism, but like all acts of terrorism are also a form of theater.

They're a way of people trying to draw attention to themselves and to derive from these acts a sense of significance in their lives.

And it's right to understand these things as terrorism, but the point of terrorism is to change how people think and feel and act.

You know, terrorism is about beyond the actual act of violence in question.

It's a larger cultural ramifications and how it influences how people conduct their lives.

And that's how I think these things need to be understood.

Yeah, it strikes me as the

because if your goal is to stop mass shootings, you probably don't have the right goal, right?

The goal should be to

protect life in general as much as you can.

I think the idea that we have a rising incidence of mass shootings

in an environment where crime is dropping and murder is dropping

is a highlight on what you're talking about.

It really seems to to me to be the attention people are seeking and doing things in this way.

And

that plays, I think, to the way the media covers these things.

And it certainly plays to the way people are able to kind of enter small tribes online and let the end and they sort of multiply the anger and angst on top of each other.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, you know, the biggest school massacre in American history, I think it's still the biggest one, was the one that happened at Bath, Michigan Michigan in the early, early part of the 20th century.

It didn't involve any firearms at all.

It was dynamite and bombs, and it was a fellow who was a frustrated political candidate who also had some debts and other problems in life, but he had political ambitions that he was unable to realize.

And his

desperate act was a sense of a way to try to draw attention to himself.

and to show that he was someone who mattered and who should be thought about and who should be considered when he was unable to get that through politics.

So part of the alienation, I think, has to do with some changes in the way we live.

That not all of us, but a lot of us move a lot more than we used to.

We change employers a lot more than we used to.

We get married later in life.

We put off parenthood until later in life.

There's less church attendance.

So the normal ties and relationships that for a long time gave people a sense of value and meaning in their lives have been either diminished or in some cases entirely eliminated for people.

And so they go looking for new sources of relationship and context and meaning.

And unfortunately, people have found these on the internet and on social media in the worst kind of tribalistic politics, whether it's the sort of us and them version of Democrats and Republicans, team red and team blue, or some of the more extreme and in the end homicidal political tendencies that you see on some of the outlying corners of the internet.

You talk about

the idea of how people choose

these tribes.

How do they choose

these groups that they join?

And I will say, and I think I'm completely wrong on this, but for a very long time, I believed these tribes were chosen essentially with,

I don't know, in the moment sort of objective cost-benefit, right?

Like you're looking at policies that you like, policies that you don't like,

and you choose sort of your group based on who agrees with you more.

You make the point in the book that's not

it at all, is it?

I want it to be at all.

These are underlying social identities.

People don't actually vote in a way that has anything to do with their short-term or near-term economic interests.

There's a lot of research on this.

And one of the best ways of predicting someone's partisan identification is what their parents was.

People inherit these social identities through their families.

And you see this too, especially in the Northeast, where you meet guys who are bankers and

insurance people and other people you would sort of stereotypically think of as being Republicans and they're lifelong Democrats and you ask them why.

And nine times out of ten, the answer is going to be something like, well, my dad was in the union and we were all Democrats and that's how that went.

And I think that's perfectly respectable.

It's a fine reason as any to get your political identity, but

it doesn't come from self-interest.

It doesn't come from economic factors.

People often talk about this in a very stupid way in the case of black voters, because black voters tend to identify very strongly with the Democratic Party, and there's this idea that it's because of the hope of welfare benefits and that sort of thing.

But in truth, as African Americans get wealthier, as their incomes go up, they become much more left-wing.

Their preferences for redistribution, for higher taxes, for welfare benefits and things like that actually increase the less likely they are to benefit from those.

And this is, you know, this is something that's a matter of social identity and how people understand their place in the world.

And it's about, well, here's what people like me are like.

But the more important part, of course, is, and here's what these other people are like.

You know, a lot of it's based on just plain opposition.

That, well, maybe I don't agree with the Democrats on everything, but I grew up really not liking these conservative people I knew from church, and they were very backward, and they were very judgmental.

And so I take my identity as being in opposition to that.

That's where a lot of this stuff comes from.

Target Kevin Williamson, the smallest minority independent thinking in the age of mob politics is the book.

There's something that politicians say all the time, and there's a word they use all the time, and it's never criticized by anyone.

In fact, when you say it, it ends arguments.

The word, of course, is democracy.

Your take on democracy is a little different than the way I see it portrayed in the media, and I think it's the right way of looking at it.

Can you kind of walk us through this?

Sure.

Yeah, I'm more with John Adams and those guys on this.

They hated the idea of democracy as such.

Of course, they meant slightly different things by it than we do.

So democracy is perfectly not only fine, but necessary.

It's a procedural question.

It's how we make certain kinds of decisions, how we choose representatives.

In some cases, it's how we make our voice heard through referenda and things like that.

But the idea that something is right or desirable or necessary, because 50% plus one of the people believe that, is nonsensical.

And the idea that something becomes more valuable as it becomes more popular or more legitimate as it becomes more popular is also nonsensical.

this is why we have things like written laws and a constitution and a bill of rights you know the bill of rights is the most anti-democratic institution in american life it's the list of 10 things you idiots don't get to vote on this stuff is settled which is going to of course come up right now with the second amendment especially

but um

We tend to attribute value to things because they're popular.

And popularity certainly has certain kinds of economic value.

You know, Taylor Swift's going to make a lot more money than Johan Bach will this year.

She's going to sell a lot more music than he will.

But that doesn't necessarily make it better or more desirable or superior.

So democracy is one little part of something that is more broadly known as liberalism.

Liberalism constitutes the rule of law, individual rights, property, freedom of speech, independent courts, all the rest of these things that make a decent, civil,

humane government possible.

In some cases, the more democratic things get, the worse they get.

And we see this in cases where you've got democratic forms that are being led by these populist demagogues.

And that's basically how Venezuela got into the situation where it is right now.

We've seen things happen like that in countries like India and Pakistan and to a lesser extent in the United States.

We've mostly been lucky on that front, but not always.

You talk about the Second Amendment, and certainly that's going to be coming up for massive debate here in the next few days.

You also talk a lot in the book about the First Amendment.

And

one of the phrases that you, again, another conversation ender.

When you say, hey, look, you can't shout fire in a crowded theater.

That's supposed to mean, well, whatever speech I'm against at this moment is okay for me to censor.

Can you kind of go into that?

Why do people misunderstand what that means?

That one is one of the worst.

It's one of the dumbest cliches that's really enabled

a lot of oppression.

So this came out of a Supreme Court argument in which the court was trying to decide whether we could lock up the head of the Socialist Party for protesting World War I.

And the idea behind Fire in a Crowded Theater was, well, if this guy is allowed to speak this way, people will riot.

There will be civil unrest.

And so

essentially, this is Justice Holmes coming up with a legal rationale for the Heckler's veto.

for saying that the problem isn't a speech, the problem, or rather, the problem isn't the fact that people are going to commit violence in reaction to the speech, but the speech itself.

So it's a pretext for censoring things that we don't want to hear because they're unpopular.

And this is a really interesting thing for where we are as a country right now, because we've got really good First Amendment jurisprudence right now, thanks to some really, really good judicial appointments.

The First Amendment legally has probably never been in better shape.

But there's a cultural question there, too.

And these things feed on one another.

And so to the extent that we think of certain ideas as being unutterable, as being outside of what should be protected,

then these things can eventually be squeezed out of what's protected by the First Amendment.

This is where the idea of hate speech comes in.

That, well, we want to protect political speech unless we really, really don't like it, in which case we're going to call it something else and it's not protected.

And of course, the whole idea of the First Amendment is to protect speech which is controversial and unpopular and marginal because if it weren't, it wouldn't need protection in the first place because no one would be trying to censor it.

So these things kind of feed off of one another.

What's considered culturally undoable is part of how things get defined in places like Canada and Austria and Germany, where they've got more invasive speech rules than we have here in the United States, but also how people here in the United States foresee a future regime of which you've got hate speech laws, more controls on political speech through what we euphemistically call campaign finance law, and those sorts of things.

So

they feed off of one another, and that's an important thing, I think, to keep in mind that anytime you're putting something outside the realm of what should be protected, that's what you're really setting yourself up for is a future regime of censorship.

Does it worry you that

they're already talking about the DOJ looking into ways to partner with big tech firms to crack down on this sort of speech?

I mean, nobody, you know, look, nobody's going to stand up, I think, more than conservatives to say,

you know, white nationalism, especially as a government ideology, which is just implied.

You have gigantic government to enforce these types of things.

I mean, it's just it's just totally against what conservatives want.

Absolutely fine.

We should all stand up against white supremacy and this sort of speech, but that's what idea is.

When it comes to government trying to implement laws to stop this,

that is, I hate to use the slippery slope thing, but it's terrifying.

Well, and the slope is slippery for reasons that people don't understand.

You know, corporations like one-size-fits-all solutions, they like to have uniformity and homogeneity.

And the problem with that is that companies like Facebook and Google and Twitter and others are global.

They are international, and it's tempting for them to take the most restrictive standard and make that their default position, the same way that California essentially sets automotive emissions rules for the rest of the country.

So, in places like Germany, Austria, much of Western Europe, but also Singapore, China, and some other places, they have a whole different culture about free speech, and they have a whole different set of rules and assumptions.

Now, Western Europe is pretty liberal and it's democratic, of course, but they've also got rules about political speech and certain kinds of political organizing.

I get into this extensively in the book.

They just simply wouldn't be acceptable in the United States under the First Amendment.

They have a theory called militant democracy, and this is the idea under which they ban certain kinds of political speech.

They prohibit certain kinds of political parties.

You know, in Austria, you can theoretically go to prison for 25 years for selling someone a copy of Mein Kampf.

Now, I don't think Mein Kampf is a great book, but I don't want to lock people up for reading it either.

And

now, in the United States, we think of these things as being crazy, and we wouldn't accept that.

But

these are not crazy, uncivilized countries.

This is Western Europe we're talking about.

Yeah, Kevin, we're up against the break here.

We got to call it here.

But the smallest minority, independent thinking in the age of mob politics, much better than Mein Comp.

I can tell you that right now.

You can get it in bookstores everywhere.

Kevin, thanks for being on the program.

Thanks so much.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

A real thing going on with the media where they quoted this one line: if we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable from the manifesto of this maniac.

What they did not include is what the context of that was.

It had nothing to do with white supremacism, it had to do with the environment.

Very clearly, talked about the environment, how corporations are shamelessly over-harvesting resources, talking about watersheds around the country being depleted, talked about water being polluted from oil drilling operations, talked about consumer culture creating tons of unnecessary plastic waste, all of these things, left-wing things, that were just not left

out of the conversation.

But I don't think that's how most people take this stuff in.

I think the way that this hits most people, certainly thankfully, not the violence, because our violence, our rates of crime are way down.

But I think where this hits most people is in their daily lives on social media, because you're getting hit with all these arguments.

We went over a bunch of them this hour already.

But you're getting in fights with all your friends over guns.

And no better person to talk to this about is probably the greatest booking of my life.

If there was ever a guest that I've booked on this program that I would marry, it's this one.

My wife, Lisa Page, joins us here on the program.

And the reason you join us, of course, Lisa, is because you get in these fights all the time on Facebook.

And

I don't understand it at all.

I know.

And here you are posting what you believe to be the right thing.

And your friends all can't help themselves, but they jump into your feed.

Yes.

So,

you know, when something like this, a tragedy like this happens,

I actually don't jump to Facebook to comment.

I really don't.

I try and keep my opinions to myself.

But But yesterday I could not help myself.

And I

really posted because I was really sick and tired of reading everybody else's opinions.

Now, when some of my friends that disagree with my opinion or my view on what's going on, they're very quick to come at me.

They do.

I don't normally reciprocate because I cherish our friendship.

I usually stay quiet.

I stand down.

I don't say a lot.

In my head, I'm raging, but I'm not going gonna let anybody know about that.

But yesterday, I don't even think what I posted on my personal page because I rarely do this on my radio page or other things.

If you don't know Lisa Page, a big, much bigger national radio personality than myself or guy.

The number one show across the country.

She does, a big, very big show.

Huge.

But it's not a political show.

So you don't normally do that.

Not at all.

And I would die.

I would never do that.

This is why you do this and I do what I do.

I cover pop culture.

You cover the political side of things.

But I don't even think what I posted on my personal page yesterday was insensitive.

It wasn't offensive.

It was just me saying, listen, guys, there's only so much we can do.

You can sit here and you can ask why, why, why,

but

we can't do much more

than to support, to donate, to get involved.

But as far as voting, like we've heard this,

we've heard this over and over and over and over again.

There's always going to be someone who decides they're going to do something terrible.

And whether it's guns or if, as we saw in France, for example, someone decided to drive their truck over a bunch of people at a festival.

Did they feel better about that?

Was that an improvement for their families that they didn't get shot, they only got run over?

Like these things, and it was more people dying than, you know, it was more than triple the amount of people who died in this past weekend's attacks.

Right.

This is going to happen either way.

Bad people do bad things.

That was basically the tone of your poem.

I was basically, yeah, I was like, you cannot stop killings.

Like, a gun does not fire itself the person behind the gun fires the gun and you know like i said in one of the i was i was going back and forth with one of my friends about mental illness and you know she's saying well not all the cases are it's not all about mental illness well maybe because a lot of these guys that have been you know, committing all these mass murders, they didn't maybe check out.

There wasn't a red flag.

And like, if you watch any of the morning shows this morning, they had a lot of specialists on saying that

at some level, there is a mental, there's something wrong in their head.

Listen, anybody that wants to go in to a place with the intention of murdering hundreds of people or a handful of people,

something's not right in your head.

You can classify it as, well, no, but he didn't check out as he wasn't mentally instable.

He was able to get this firearm.

He got it.

Well, people are going to kill if they want to kill.

They're going to find a way.

They're going to find a way.

They have with all sorts of different things when it comes to whether it's, you know, poisoning people or bombing people or running people over or stabbing people, there's always something there.

There's always a way for them to do it.

But we were saying yesterday, Stu and I were talking, and we're like, you know, every day in the country, there are people that are getting huge car wrecks and 10 in 12 people are dying at once.

Where's the outrage there?

Where's the outrage for the drunk driver that hit somebody over the weekend and killed 12 people?

Where's the outrage?

I don't hear about it.

Yeah, because there's not a political advantage.

My Corey Booker doesn't get to get a couple more donations if he comes out and talks about car accidents.

But it's like, it's an interesting part of this, and that's a great point.

When you have a situation where there's political divides, the most difficult road to solve a situation like that is to attack the place where most people disagree.

Right.

Right.

And so if you want to keep, if your goal is to stop mass shootings, well, that's not the right goal.

The goal should be to keep people alive.

Right.

Right.

So, you know, you talked about car accidents.

Well, these things do happen all the time.

There is automated cars, the whole self-driving car things, they estimate that that would wipe out 94%

of deaths.

94% of deaths.

We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people that would be alive instead of dead over a decade

if that were to come to fruition.

There's no political opposition to it, right?

There's not like Republicans like it and Democrats don't.

But so there's no fun.

Yeah, there's no point in saving those lives.

Right.

There's no point arguing.

You know, and I will say that

it's not everybody that I know.

It's a few people.

But, you know, a couple of my friends genuinely want to know.

Right.

Like I have one friend, and we've been friends for almost 20 years, and she genuinely wants to know why people like guns or why, you know, like she's very left, but tries to understand the rights.

She really does try.

And

that's infrequent, though.

I will say on Facebook, right?

It's people just stating whatever their preconceived notion is.

Right, right, right.

And I will state my opinion, and they just keep coming back.

And

at some point, you just have to, you got to just end the argument.

I mean, this is why yesterday will probably be the first and maybe the last time I even express my political opinion about it because it's not worth getting in fights and getting frustrated and causing conflict with your friends.

Y'all know where I stand.

If you are a friend on my personal page, you know,

you know where I'm coming from.

You know what I believe.

So lay off.

Lay off me for a minute.

Okay.

Because this is, you've brought this up before, and I think this is a really interesting point.

If people know where you stand,

why bother if, you're friends, why bother jumping in there when you know how it ends?

Well, I guess because I feel like I would get support from my friends.

I feel like maybe because most of our friends, most of my friends are like-minded like me.

Our kids go to a school where many of the parents, we're all kind of in the same boat.

We all think the same way.

We all believe the same things.

And I think my intention was, well, I'm just going to put this out there because I am going to I know I'm going to get support from my friends.

And I did.

I got a lot.

I got I mean, we're up to almost 70 comments.

But then there's a couple people back and forth, back and forth, back.

And then our neighbors are getting involved.

And now, last night I went to bed and I'm like, I'm not, I'm glad I am not involved anymore.

These, all these four can hash it out.

But it really is like social media.

It's, it's hard because you do, it's social media.

Everybody's on it.

So you kind of have to bring it up.

And I mean, thankfully, my show is not a political show.

So I make no mention of it because it's not my place.

But it's funny.

You enter the debate the same way we do in political circles.

And I think this happens to everybody.

This debate starts working, you know, playing out on your Facebook page.

Right.

Page.

You have strong feelings about it.

Whoever your friend is has strong feelings about it.

And you're, I know what it feels like.

Like, you're, you're, your stomach's tight.

You're raging.

You just want to respond.

You want to find the perfect thing that's going to shut the ball.

I want to punch a wall.

I want to, I'm literally, I'm not a drinker.

I wanted to do 700 shots yesterday.

Just get wasted.

But it's true.

And like, I don't know.

Like, in the end of the day, you never solve a debate when you feel like that but it kind of puts you in that same position of like hosting a you know you're obviously in media but like not everybody is and so they're you're in that circle where like you are now in front of all your friends arguing back and forth looking for that like sort of mic drop moment to win this debate that never comes no I mean, because you know why you have the people that want to just keep coming back with you to stats and stats and stats.

Really, what I should have did was plop up my laptop right next to you and said, just tell me what's right now.

I don't know what to say.

I'm out of all all it.

But honestly, like, it is, it's one of those things where you caught, it's, it's hard to not, it's hard to not stay quiet about it because especially when topics like this arise, like I get very heated, as you know, I get passionate.

And a lot of times, Stu will say, just get off of Facebook.

Stop going back and forth.

And, you know, and ironically, like a lot of these conversations we'll have.

And then like five minutes later, I'm just on the phone texting with the friend that I was just sort of kind of having a, maybe a little bit of an argument.

And we're talking about,

you know,

what are you wearing tomorrow?

What did you see the show?

Are you watching?

You know, did you get your?

So it's very,

you know, it's confusing, but it's hard to not address, but also you want to not address it.

But well, you don't want to get in the middle of it, but it's also like you don't want to seed the ground, right?

Like, these are important issues.

You feel passionately about them, obviously.

Like, to just eliminate the debate and take yourself out of it is not the right answer either.

I think my favorite actually moment of this was, I think at one point you posted something on Instagram and, you know, you're in the middle and someone made some anti-gun comment and all of a sudden in your feed pops up Dana Lash.

Yeah.

And it's like, can you imagine the mismatch which is going on right now?

You have Dana Lash, who's like written multiple bestsellers.

And she's a good friend of mine.

And she's a good friend of ours.

Yeah.

And this poor person who thinks they're going to win this debate is now arguing against Dana Lash.

Oh, this is horrible.

Yeah.

So, well,

I like, are you still friends with these people?

Are you still?

Yes, I am.

I am

very good friends.

Very good friends.

And we will just have to always always continue to agree to disagree on a lot of these things.

Thank you.

And Lisa Page, of course, now, first of all, I've heard all the jokes.

Yes, I know.

I married up.

Yes, the purses are still in the Liberty Safe.

Purse are still in Liberty Safe.

That's always a topic.

I didn't threaten you at the beginning of this relationship.

Can you confirm that on the record?

No, you never threatened.

Thank you.

No.

It was, I had not

bribe anybody.

No, maybe a little bit more.

And a purse contract.

There you go.

Lisa Page, she has a radio show.

Also, a new podcast as well.

Oh, yeah.

Lisa Page made me do it.

Lisa Page made me do it.

So if you are a guy.

we will not be talking political

stuff.

Politics.

Nothing on politics.

If you're a guy who wants to figure out good presents for your wife, I would recommend this highly,

as well as following her.

And if you're

a lady or you happen to identify today as a lady and you like

all the, you know, whatever products or whatever you're spending 90% of all of our money on, you can go to Lisa Page, Made Me Do It as a podcast.

You can check that out.

Lisa, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

And hopefully you can keep your friends here for the next few days at least.

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