'Remaining Civil is the Key!' with Riaz Patel - 10/9/18

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Glen back.

It's Tuesday, October 9th.

This is the Glen Back program.

We have in Portland, Oregon,

a mayor who has surrendered the town.

He has surrendered the town to Antifa.

They, apparently, not the police, can direct traffic now.

And the police were there.

They did nothing.

If you don't do what Antifa says you have to do,

they'll threaten you.

America is at a crossroads.

We have to decide,

or it will be decided for us.

My father taught me when I was very young, the most powerful words in any language

are these:

I am.

And the reason why they're so powerful is because whatever it is that you say after that,

you begin to believe and you create.

What is America saying it is right now?

We are being told over and over again we are worthless.

The Western way of life is worthless.

That America is not good, never has been.

In fact, it's a force for bad.

And unless we actively replace those things in our heads and the heads of those around us, we will be worthless and we will be a force for bad.

We are arguing about some of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

And we are missing what's really going on.

The world is being redesigned right now.

And so many of us are worried about the future.

Today, we'll see in the New York Times and elsewhere that the world only has 10 years, and you have to be a hero in the next 10 years if you don't stop global warming.

Why, we are all going to die.

So, you must be a hero today,

and you have to take action.

The question is,

what does that action look like?

Do any of the things that the environmentalists are actually proposing, do they help or hurt?

What the world looks like in 2030 depends on how we answer questions that we're supposedly arguing about right now.

We can try to avoid it.

We cannot listen.

We cannot pay attention.

But, as Bonhoeffer said,

not to speak is to speak, not to stand is to stand.

No answer will count as

our answer.

Will we all be remembered as winter soldiers

and complicit

with what I believe will be remembered as the greatest failure

and crime in humanity's history?

Just standing by,

waving your finger or waving the flag as the Western world burns.

I do not want to be part of the problem in America.

And I fail on that all the time.

We all do.

But what counts

is the effort.

What counts

is are you trying?

Are you trying?

And are you better today than you were yesterday?

Have you found any answers or are you only shouting things down?

Are you just out in the street directing traffic?

Because you feel it's your right

well have you even looked at what your rights mean

where do your rights even come from

today I saw think progress write a whole article about how the Constitution has failed that was the headline the Constitution has failed

and then It goes on to explain how it is really a slavery document and the three-fifths in the Constitution.

All lies, all lies.

Now you can argue that,

or we can begin to teach our children.

You can argue that

and you can throw it back in their face with some sort of epitet or

name-calling of some sort.

Here's the question that we all have to answer.

Is America a force for good

or a force for bad?

That requires real thought and discussion.

Because it is neither, in my opinion.

It is both.

It has been a force for bad, and I warn you, if we leave the Bill of Rights, we will become the darkest force ever on earth.

With our technology, we will make the Nazis look like rookies.

Make no mistake.

We have been bad.

We have rounded up the Japanese.

We've rounded up the Germans and the Italians.

We rounded up the blacks.

We told people they couldn't vote,

including women.

But we are also the people

that freed people.

We freed blacks and we fought for it.

We fought and died.

We fought to free the Japanese.

We fought to free the Germans and all of Europe and the world.

We fought to free

Russia from the tyranny of communism.

And we failed in the time of peace.

Are we good or are we bad?

Is the Declaration of Independence still a viable mission statement?

Because that's all that is.

The Declaration of Independence is a mission statement, period.

Do we still hold these truths to be self-evident?

Forget about the past.

Let's talk about the future.

We have never, ever reached the heights demanded by our mission statement.

But have we gotten better?

Is it still worth striving for?

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.

That means we're born equal.

We all have an equal chance.

Don't judge somebody by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Do you have everything the baby laying next to you has when you're born?

As far as human rights and dignity,

do you still believe that?

And I'm not talking about, well, that's not the way.

I'm asking you as an aspirational mission statement.

That is the mission statement of our country.

Do you want to live in a country that strives and falls short, but picks itself back up again?

Do you want to live in a country that says all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator?

Why would you have to throw God into it?

I don't care what you put there,

it just must be bigger than man.

The reason why the creator is important

is if you don't have something bigger than man,

then man will print and take away rights.

So, if you want to say the moon,

the eternities,

the great cosmos, whatever,

but it endows each of us with certain unchangeable rights.

And those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, there's a lot more,

and that's where the Bill of Rights comes in.

Do we still believe in this?

As an aspirational statement, We are only talking about the past.

We're talking about the mistakes of the past.

You cannot fix the mistakes of the past without saying where we're going.

So, where are we going, Antifa?

You want to tear us down.

Now, I read your website.

I read your mission statement.

I strongly disagree.

Capitalism is not the problem.

Capitalism

that has no moral sentiment is.

But you don't fix that by

a state-run economy,

by co-ops.

It always fails.

Now,

you

and your allies in the press refuse to point out that that is exactly what you're looking for.

It's a failed system.

This one has failed us

because it has been usurped.

The Constitution no longer means anything.

The Bill of Rights no longer means anything.

Why?

Because it's not taught anymore.

Anybody who takes the oath of office in Washington, 90% of them are liars.

Not even intentional liars.

They don't know it.

They don't believe in it.

They will tell you they do.

As was told to me by a very powerful individual once, look, Glenn, we all believe in the Constitution, but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.

No.

No.

You do not do what you have to do.

That's ends justify the means.

We either believe in this or we do not.

And that is the question, America.

Do you believe?

neutral, half-assed, not thought out,

sitting on the sidelines?

All of those answers mean nothing in the end.

Only those who know it, who understand it, who have done their homework, who can intellectually defend it.

Those are the winter soldiers.

Those will be the ones that restore freedom for all mankind.

Everything else is lip service, a game,

and actually a tool in the hands of those who wish to create chaos and destroy all we have.

That monologue, and so much more, is actually the beginning of part three of my book, Addicted to Outrage.

Finding our unum.

What is our purpose anymore?

We're going to talk about that with you and those who have read the book.

If you have read the book, 888-727-BECK.

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So as you're celebrating indigenous peoples, I just want to remind you to throw this little fact out and don't take my word for it.

Look it up.

The indigenous peoples, the American Indian,

they held slaves.

Oh, wait, what?

Yeah, they bought African Americans on the block.

But here's the interesting thing:

when America abolished slavery through the Civil War, the

indigenous nations,

they did not.

They went on for another decade or so before they went, you know what, maybe we should stop slavery.

Oh, really?

Just another decade.

Yeah, just another decade or so.

Oh, yeah.

So it's no big deal.

If I had to guess, I would say probably the Jews made them do it.

Probably just where they were.

Yeah, it's probably.

It's probably.

Just like they turned Taylor Swift.

Both the Jews responsible for both things.

Holy cow.

All right.

We have a lot of people.

Let me go to Scotland in Nevada.

Hello, Scotland.

Hello, Glenn.

I just wanted to say that we can be outraged about anything.

So what we need to do is to turn that negative into positive actions.

Like when President Kennedy challenged America to get to the moon, we need to turn our negative thoughts into the positive thoughts.

Well, I don't think it's ever been been easier.

Do you?

I mean, we're just ignoring all of the positives that are happening to us.

I mean, you want a moonshot?

Okay, Elon Musk going to Mars 2025.

I mean, what's bigger than that?

It's just not a national project.

Do we need to wrap it up in national money to be able to get excited about the future?

Because that's what that was all about.

The moonshot was all about doing things because we can.

Doing the hard things, not the easy things.

I mean,

that was the whole goal.

And it did galvanize people.

Thanks, Scottlin.

You know what people don't think about is

1968 is when we went to the moon.

Same year as Woodstock.

Wow.

Yeah, that's weird.

Yeah.

So you were either rolling around in the mud or you were reaching for the stars.

There were two Americas.

Well, where is the America that is reaching for the stars?

Where is that America that says, they're not going to stop me?

I saw a post today

that I had to answer in my Twitter feed.

Let me see if I can find it real quick.

That was, it's actually, this is so wrong.

What is being taught to children and to everybody?

There was a person, Helen Pluckrose,

and apparently, fat is my identity, and I belong to it whether I'm aware of it or not.

And even if I'm not, this is what I'm known for.

And I'm kidding myself to think people actually think of me primarily as a writer and speaker rather than a fat person.

Imagine living that way.

I responded

to that.

As a growing member of the fat community,

I find the real problem is when I look at myself in the mirror and I define myself by my body.

I am more than my body.

You can define me any way you wish.

It's your loss.

What you say after I am

is much more important than what others say about you.

So, which are we going to be, America?

Because the choice is here.

And the choice is so much more than Donald Trump or Kavanaugh.

It is so much bigger than this.

Who are we?

Are we the people that roll in the mud and are constantly looking down and debasing ourselves?

Or are we the people that look up?

Are we the people that look to the future?

Are we the people that say, I am getting better every day?

I am part of a positive community that is going to make a difference to millions.

Glenn, back.

Mercury.

Taking phone calls today for people who have read Addicted to Outrage and want to make a

illustrate one of the points in the book or have questions, want to further the dialogue, 888-727-BECK if you have read the book.

Let me go to Greg.

Greg is a contributor for the Federalist.

Wow.

Hi, Greg.

How are you?

Good morning, Glenn.

Good to hear from you.

Great to talk to you.

I understand that five years ago, you may not have been my biggest fan.

No, no, not at all, actually.

I'm with you, Greg, on that one.

No, totally with you.

He has different reasons.

You were on the left?

Oh, yeah, very much so.

Tell me about it.

Well,

I was raised by

far-left kind of ex-hippie parents.

And, you know, that was just kind of pushed into me from a young age.

And it was just

how I saw everything.

It was like a filter over the entire world.

And I walked around looking suspiciously at everybody, thinking that, you know, there's something deeply broken within them, that they're out to to get somebody, that they don't understand what I do,

even though I I didn't understand very much at all.

It was pure emotion and it was raw and ill-informed.

So what happened?

And well,

I one of my close friends

we were having a discussion and he he actually mentioned

Fox News and

just kind of said that that's that was his news source.

And I was appalled and I was furious.

And

I went home from that, you know, just thinking, what?

I thought I knew this guy.

All along, I had no idea.

He's some kind of monster.

How could this be?

And

I got curious

as to how this could happen.

And I went home and I started watching and listening to some people on the other side.

And it was quite a slap in the face.

This was prior to

Trump and the whole situation now and all this flamethrowing.

And what I saw were, you know, people who celebrate what we've overcome instead of what we've had to overcome.

And it was really powerful.

very restorative

to me.

And, you know, looking at your book through

the lens of addiction,

looking at the the way that we approach our politics and the way we regard one another through that lens I think is so important.

I've gone through addiction myself and

as an addict you you learn about about real humility

and you find help, you find comfort in

some of the most unlikely places.

And you know, it really kind of becomes clear to you that you know, you can say that diversity is our greatest strength, but you know, it's more than that.

It's the cooperation between diverse people.

It's the humility of diverse people, I think.

One of my favorite quotes is

where there is doubt, there is freedom.

And

we flip that up on its head.

We are now so,

I mean, look at Antifa, directing traffic.

They are so convinced that they are right They will bludgeon you if you disagree with them.

There's no freedom there where there is doubt There is freedom where there is humility there is freedom

Absolutely and you know when when you know intellectual exploration when when curiosity

going against the green in any way when that when that becomes punishable

you I I think I think they they really risk

driving

good people down some unsavory roads.

And

there's no good in that.

Great.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely, Glenn.

Thank you so much for reading the book.

And I'm going to send you a signed copy.

But thank you for reading and calling in.

Daryl in Kentucky, you're on the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, Daryl.

Hey, Glenn, how's it going?

I'm good.

How are you?

Doing great.

I just wanted to say that I really love the book, and I think that my favorite part of it is that even though

we can't surrender, like you've said several times, we have to remain civil.

Because maybe I'm naive in thinking this, but I think that eventually the left will realize they have gone too far.

They will step back from the ledge.

And if we're civil, if we're there standing strong on our principles, we'll be able to bring them back into the fold and

bring the country back together.

But if we give in, we do the same thing we're doing.

We just help tear the country apart.

You were on the left as well at one point?

I was.

I was raised in southern West Virginia.

My family were very deep blue Democrats, and we believed that Republicans were just people who took money away from the poor to give it to the rich.

And,

you know,

I was a pretty progressive guy in college, and I didn't really start looking at the other side until after 2014.

I went to war.

I was a soldier in the military.

I spent all of 2014 in Afghanistan, leading some of the best men and women I've ever met in my life.

And when I came back, my country was completely different.

I couldn't figure out what happened.

I was no longer welcome in the left as a straight white male veteran.

So I had to figure out what happened.

I started looking at people that I had mocked, including yourself in the past.

And I actually started reading Roy H.

Williams and Michael R.

Drew's Pendulum, which you noted in the book.

And

that really, you know, maybe I'm buying into their theory a little bit too much, but I've seen it firsthand.

And

I do believe that we have another five years of this getting worse before it gets better, but I still believe the dawn is coming.

So do I.

It's whether or not we can pull enough people away from the cliff before, I think, the year is 2025, where it starts to come back the other direction.

So

how can we help people like you?

Because

I think we need to start defining

Democrats when we say the Democrats.

I think we need to start saying the people in the leadership of the party.

Because I don't think, like you, there are Democrats who are good, who love the country, and are finding themselves going, wait a minute, I don't have any place to go.

And

we have to,

and I'm not saying it's in the Republican Party.

I'm just saying people

need to start

being more welcoming to people who are finding themselves on the outs.

What should we be aware of that you went through?

I think you should be aware that even though policy

is an area that we may never agree on, that principle is something that we can agree on, that things like individual freedom, things like

not

having a government that can control you from

several hundred miles away, that can control every little aspect of your life.

It's something I talk to my wife and my niece about all the time is that

before

President Obama, even though I voted for the guy and I kind of liked what he was selling,

the president's name didn't get mentioned at the dinner table every single night at my home when I was growing up.

The power that we have given to Washington over the past 10, 20 years is too much.

And I'm not really sure what the end state, what the solution for that is, but I think just talking about the things you talked about in the book, the principles that make us all united, our unum, the Bill of Rights, the things that make us all American, are what we can unify behind.

So the section of because I

man, I've really struggled with what it is that brought us together and it's really or can bring us back together.

And it's really so simple when you finally get down to it.

It is the Bill of Rights, don't you think?

I agree.

I think that you will never find in any other country that I've been in, I've been to several, Africa, Germany, Afghanistan,

Romania, you will never find a country that beats itself up over its past as much as America does.

We realize that we've done some horrible things, like you said in your read-in and your monologue, but we've also,

you know, I think it's something that Dinesh D'Souza said.

By recognizing our faults, by admitting to our faults, you have to kind of, in a way, admit to America's moral superiority because because we realize that we've made mistakes and we're trying to fix them.

Daryl, thank you so much for your phone call.

I appreciate it.

God bless.

He brought up a great point about how before Obama, the president's name didn't come up every day at the dinner table.

Obviously, that's getting even worse now with Trump.

I mean, people are obsessed about talking about him all the time.

There's a story today in Axios about how they are, the networks have recognized this and they're doubling down.

They've enjoyed high ratings and engagement from Trump coverage for the networks at a relatively low cost.

Now that a precedent has been set around these high returns, it's unlikely news outlets will cut back, meaning the barrage of political content being created and absorbed during the Trump presidency will likely outlive this administration.

They want to make, I mean, like Trump is a celebrity, right?

So

and he's a polarizing guy and people love him and hate him, but they want to change.

They want this to be the norm.

They want you to be obsessed with this all the time at the expense of the rest of your life.

It is in a totalitarian regime.

It is the norm.

You have to know what Derfuhrer or the leader is saying and doing and wants you to do.

It is the norm.

Anything that normalizes this, any intention of saying, you know what, that's good for America, is mistaken.

It's wrong.

Yeah, and this is, you know, this is, it's driven, I think, at this point by clicks and viewers.

And, you know, it's, it's one of those things that just is going to continue.

It's going to be hard to reverse that addiction as well.

They, you know, when they can get, you know, the Rachel Maddow audience is addicted to outrage maybe more than any other, right?

Their ratings have gone through the roof because of it.

And you think MSNBC

is going to reverse that path now?

No.

They're not going to say, oh, well, you know what?

Maybe we went too far.

I don't know.

I mean, I'd like to be optimistic about it, but I don't see it happening.

All right.

We're going to take a quick break back to your phone calls, 888-727-BECK.

Then in hour number three, we're going to show you an experiment we did and take you behind the scenes of something that we tried tried to do with the gun debate.

Can we get people, all different walks of life,

people to sit, sit, just eight people, sit in a room

and

actually come up with any workable solutions?

Wow, was that an eye-opening experience.

We're going to show you all about it.

Coming up in hour number three.

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Let me take Don in Indiana.

Hello, Don.

Welcome to the program.

Good morning.

Hey.

Go ahead.

No, go ahead, sir.

You wanted me to look at page 294 of the book, Addicted to Outrage.

What's your

question?

Oh, no, I'm just stating that I'm on page 294.

Oh, you are?

Yes.

Okay.

And you're talking about

recovery steps of alcoholism.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to tie this into the nation.

And where is the nation's rock bottom, in your opinion?

And how do we recover from it?

I am beginning to think that it is civil war.

I'm beginning to to think that our rock bottom is too far down.

However, I can't live in that world.

And it depends on how many people

will stand and not go over the cliff.

How many people are there?

Are there enough of us, Republicans and Democrats in our own neighborhoods, that will say, I don't want anything to do with that.

I won't do that.

That's not who we are as a people.

That's not who my neighbors are.

And I am not going to be pushed over the cliff by antifar Nazis.

I'm not doing it.

Do we hit that, Don?

Well, I would hope as a nation that we do not ever hit that.

But I think you could be hitting on something as a civil war in our nation.

May not be physical like our last civil war, but it could be on the social media and platforms.

Oh, we're already in that.

And the anthropos, of course.

We're already in that.

I am I'm very concerned about

violence.

And,

you know, you have an assassination,

you have any of these kinds of things, and it could spiral the country out of control.

And

I would hope that we would,

blessed be the peacemakers.

Blessed be the peacemakers.

And it's going to be harder and harder to be those people.

And that does not mean, as I point out in the book over and over again, does not mean surrender your principles.

It just

means stand in what you've always believed.

Stand in what you know is true

and encourage others to stand with you.

Glenn Back is coming live to talk about the right path forward and to make fun of the people standing in the way.

He might not be able to save the country, but at least we can all go down laughing.

Glenn Back Live, the Addicted to outrage tour on tour this fall

glenn back

this is it's tuesday october 9th okay yeah this is the glenbeck program this is what it sounded like on the streets of portland uh just a couple of days ago just go that way

because i told you to really

don't hurt

you little white little

really

this is anthony directing traffic aren't you the first amendment get the down the road.

Please just

go ahead and just please turn right.

Please go the direction I asked for.

Jesus Christ, that's right.

You're fucking traffic in there.

Oh, you're fucking traffic.

You can turn.

You can just turn.

Oh, you're not South Carolina.

You are a little white supremacist.

North Carolina want that.

Right.

I'm a white supremacist because I'm white.

Are you kidding me?

Go back to North Carolina.

The guy who is shouting that you're a white supremacist is a white guy himself with

Antifa.

I mean, the guy

who's declaring freedom of speech is with antifa while he's trying to shut down somebody else's right and freedom of speech.

America, who are we?

Who are we?

Are we going to learn from the Kavanaugh thing?

Are we going to actually come back from the precipice?

You know, it's really fun when people say, you know, gee, how dare you say there's a difference between man and a woman?

There's no difference.

And in fact, women should be on more corporate boards.

We should have a law that mandates that.

Wait a minute, we should have a law that mandates that?

Why do we need to have a woman on the board of directors?

Well, I'll tell you this: America would be a different place if a woman were president.

Well, yes, I happen to agree with that.

Huh, that's strange because

that kind of proves that there is a difference between men and women.

Now that can be fun, you bet.

That's fun.

But does it move anyone forward?

Are we talking about anything meaningful today?

Do you know what stopped people in Poland from helping and hiding Jews?

It was not the fear of opening the curtain at the sound of a truck stopping in your neighborhood, and that

if you were caught looking out the window, that you would be shot as well.

The real fear started long before the truck even pulled up.

The real fear was that what you had heard, the rumors,

that they were true.

And you didn't want to know,

because then you would have to take action and fight against it,

or live with the knowledge and the shame that you knew it was true and did nothing.

We are a nation now dismissing the violence.

We are dismissing the calls for violence.

We are dismissing the embrace by the media.

And when I say we, I don't mean all of us.

There are some that celebrate it,

some that embrace embrace it,

some that ignore it,

and some

who speak out and feel that no one's listening.

It depends on how you're speaking out.

Because if we are in this for changing people's minds, we have to change people's hearts, and that begins with us.

So how do we do it?

That's what I talk about in the book Addicted to Outrage, and we're taking your calls and questions and comments on it if you have read it.

Let me go to Anthony in Massachusetts.

Hello, Anthony.

You're on the Glen Bank program.

Hey, Glenn, how are you?

Good.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

So, you know, I'm looking, you mentioned earlier that really the opposition are the people leading the leadership of the Democrat Party.

Orwell had this right in 1984 with the inner party and outer party.

And what I see happening with my friends on the left is they're outer party members.

They work every day, they're not involved in politics, but they get sucked in on social media and they're being manipulated.

And it's a huge chunk of the American population being

pulled further left.

Agreed.

And I want to hear your thoughts on that.

I think you're absolutely right.

And it's why we have to be a different and unusual and peculiar people

on

the internet.

Because if they see, if all they see are people on the right punching back the people on the left and both sides suck,

well, they're going to stick with what they know.

If they are seeing their side being unreasonable, violent, if you see Antifa, the way to answer Antifa is not

with

the militant people that will come out or the Nazis to come out and fight them in the streets.

That is the moment before we lose our humanity.

That is the moment that Martin Luther King walks through and just is peaceful and gentle, and you don't strike back.

It works at this point, but this point is going to slip away quickly.

As we lose our humanity, as they did in Germany, and you no longer are a Judeo-Christian country with those kinds of peaceful values, you miss the moment.

And then it just becomes,

you know,

either communism or socialism.

What's really the difference?

Oh, well, the leader says it's very different, so I have to kill all of the other group.

You have to act while there still is a Judeo-Christian value, and we're losing it quickly.

So to get to the far left, we'll never do that.

But get to the people like you're talking about, you have to develop ways to be peaceful and not part of that angry crowd.

It's what I've talked about for 20 years.

There's going to come a point where everybody's going to be running in a certain direction, and you are going to have to have your credibility, your kindness.

You're going to have to be able to stand up and say, no, wait, don't.

Don't go that way.

You're not going to stop the whole crowd, but you'll be able to stop enough.

Thanks, Anthony.

We'll send you a book.

Let me go to Heather in Virginia.

Hello, Heather.

You're on the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, Glenn.

How are you?

I'm very good.

I overall agree with everything in the book.

I think it's awesome.

I want to talk about kind of a minor point, I guess.

Okay.

You're talking about how AI is going to come in and replace almost all the jobs.

And I know you don't necessarily agree with UBI, but you've said that we need to at least have a conversation about UBI because of it.

And I think we need to be careful about even

considering UBI.

I think that they're really using fear over AI to try to come in and institute this, which is

something that they want to push us towards socialism.

I think that AI,

while it will certainly change everything, obviously,

we've run into this in the past and all the other technical revolutions where the Luddites, they were afraid.

that technology was going to come and replace their jobs.

That was their problem.

Correct.

And so

I understand that AI is definitely coming and it's going to change things, but it's not going to take over everything, all the jobs.

In addition, obviously, to the people that will need to create the machines and keep the AI running,

there's certain things AI just can't do, like

fixing a leak in your plumbing in your house.

Probably AI is not going to do that.

As far as service, obviously I think McDonald's is a great example where AI, you know, I don't think many people are going to to be upset if they go into McDonald's and not have to deal with anyone.

But Chick-fil-A is known for their service.

And I think that...

Let me ask you this.

Let me ask you this.

First of all, I just, and

I don't mean any offense or anything.

I just want to know

how up to speed you are on this.

What books are you reading on AI?

Are you just a generalist or have you dug in deep on this?

Yeah, I'm more of a generalist.

I have not done deep work on this.

So I'm coming just from a different perspective, not having done the deep research that I know that you have

on this.

But

just my feeling, like

AI is going to absolutely be able to diagnose cancer quicker and more accurately than a doctor.

But are you going to want to sit in front of a robot and have the robot tell you that you have cancer and explain your options?

Okay, so Heather, there is a, and I can't remember the name of it on

this particular subject, but I will look for it.

There is a whole book based just on this.

Nursing is probably one of the jobs that will be the last to go.

However,

there are two companies right now that are doing studies on emotions.

The emotion of being able to detect it in someone and being able to reflect it in face.

The reason why

that we don't connect with robots is because they cannot see our emotions and read them and also reflect emotions in their eyes and in their face.

So, there are companies now that are specifically just working on cracking the code of emotional connection.

It's going to take a while, but a while is what, 10 years, 15 years in today's world?

And I think that's a long while.

So, there are those

ideas that are being worked on right now.

You have to understand that Silicon Valley is currently working on the utopian idea of 100% unemployment, that no one has to work, that everyone will be able to have plenty because robots and everything else will be able to manufacture.

This is different than any other technological leap that we've ever made.

Yes, we are going to shed jobs, and yes, there will be other jobs that will be created.

That is one theory.

The prevailing theory is there is nothing that a human can do that true AGI and especially ASI will not be able to do much, much better, including breaking the news to people.

Because the idea is that that system will be able to go through every bit of information about the individual they're about to tell.

So they will know everything that they've ever posted about, let's say their mom just died.

They'll be able to see everything they've ever written to their mom, every text message to their mom.

They will know the exact relationship and they will be able to temper the message much better and much more personal than anyone else.

The bigger problem is on AI and doctors is this will happen quickly.

Already, and I can't remember the name of the system, but it is in New York, and you'll have to excuse me.

I read about this about three, four years ago.

The New York Board of Medicine already has a computer on the board.

And what they're doing is they are feeding in all kinds of information.

And

it is not like a human doctor, the best human doctor that has seen a lot, done a lot, really up on the latest research and all of the facts and studies and history, everything else.

This has perfect recollection of it.

And they have found that it can diagnose so much better.

I think it's 50% for the doctors and it's 98% for the computer, way in advance.

At what point do we say, I don't want a human to do the diagnosis?

I don't want the best specialist.

I want the IBM, please.

So you have to understand that there is a fundamental shift that the world has never, ever seen before.

And we're about to experience that shift between 2020 and 2030.

And the world will not be like it is today.

You started your comment about the section of the book where there's a chapter where I talk about UBI, universal basic income.

I I am against universal basic income.

I do not think that that is the way we should go.

But we as conservatives must be willing to listen to the debate.

And I'm not talking about the people who are socialists in Washington.

I'm talking about the people who are studying

the culture, studying humans, and studying technology together, that are now looking for what is it that will give people value?

What is it when we do hit high unemployment?

If your goal is 100%,

Bain Capital says we will have 30% of unemployment and it will be a permanent 30% unemployment.

That, so you know, is about the size of the Great Depression.

When you have that, how do you stop civil unrest?

How do you give people meaning?

And how do you

give people enough money to be able to live and further their life.

It's fraught with problems.

And even universal basic income, I think, misses the fundamental point that

people don't want to live without a purpose.

And too many people get their purpose from their job, especially men.

We can't just look at the money problem.

And you can't just give people stuff.

If you give people stuff, they value it less.

And most importantly,

on this,

when you have a universal basic income and 70%, 5% of the people can work,

what stops

people who want control and power or just basic human instinct or human reaction?

What stops that 30% from saying, well, wait a minute, I don't have a job.

I can't even get a job.

How come I have to live on this and they have that?

It will be the same old story, but we must have these conversations now

and stop with the nonsense that we're dealing with.

Thanks, Heather, for your call.

Made a book out to you and it will be in the mail.

Sponsor this half hour is Goldline.

Stu, did you see the...

Oh my gosh, Nikki Haley has just resigned as U.S.

ambassador.

I just wanted to jump in.

Yeah, she...

why

there's no word on that yet.

She submitted it last week to President Trump and he accepted it.

Why?

She's great.

Yeah, I mean, it may just be her choice.

She may have had enough.

A lot of these guys come in and they do a couple of years and they're gone.

She's great.

Yeah, she's been great.

So there's no word on some big disagreement or anything like that at this point.

But I don't know.

No, she's been a romantic star.

Okay, did you see the headline on CNN just a little while ago about how

Donald Trump's Donald Trump is now making the Kavanaugh

confirmation and appointment political?

Always turning it into a big political issue.

I don't know if you.

Oh, my gosh.

It was a completely bipartisan love fest until Donald Trump got involved.

Yesterday.

Right, yesterday was the big time.

Oh my gosh.

That's unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

They will say anything.

All right, so I want to tell you that I I was just out in Los Angeles and I met with the guys at Goldline and they were working on a study and a report on the different things that could happen if there is a Democratic victory.

If there's a Democratic victory in the House and God forbid the Senate, we are looking at a different world.

And the next two years are going to be very, very different.

I've read the report and I am sending it to my friends.

I want you to read it as well.

I buy gold and silver as an insurance against chaos, and I think this report on what they say happens is realistic, and it only adds to significant chaos.

I want you to get this copy of this report right now.

It's free.

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You need this information.

Be informed of what our future could hold.

Call now.

Get the free report at 866Goldline.

1-866-GoldLine or Goldline.com.

I'm taking your phone calls now at 888-727-BECK.

Let's go to Robert in Michigan.

Hello, Robert.

Mr.

Beck, thank you very much for taking my call.

You bet.

I have not missed one of your shows for about 10 years now.

I'm a big fan.

Thank you very much.

Have you read Addicted to Outrage?

I have not, and quite frankly, that's why I'm calling in.

I was hoping I could get on the air so I could get an autographed copy.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, you can get an unautographed copy at the bookstore and help feed my poor starving children.

But yes, I will send it to you.

So,

what's your point here, Robert, that you wanted to call in about?

You know, because I've listened to you faithfully for quite a long time,

I have a very similar mindset to about 95, 98% of everything you say.

And as far as this country is concerned,

I think we are headed for some sort of a civil war.

I think we're going to implode from within as a country.

And I would be shocked, and I hate to, I hope by saying it, it doesn't come true, but I would be shocked if someone, especially after the midterms, if the Democrats do take over, I would be shocked if Trump, President Trump, is either not impeached, thrown out of office, or, God forbid, assassinated.

Okay.

Don't want to even speculate on that with the president.

Robert, thank you for your call.

I wouldn't, he is going to be impeached.

If they take the House, he will be impeached.

He will not necessarily be removed because they need to take the Senate as well, but he will be impeached.

That's a foregone conclusion.

But you say you wouldn't be shocked at assassination attempts.

Well, you shouldn't be.

They tried to kill the GOP Congress, the congressmen that were playing baseball just, what, 18 months ago.

Rand Paul had an attack at his house.

They're already moving in that direction.

Nikki Haley has resigned as the ambassador to the UN.

We'll have more on that coming up.

Also, an incredible hour.

We tried to take seven people and put them in a room, all of them from different backgrounds, and tried to have a reasonable discussion about guns.

Can you get

all different viewpoints into a room, the entire spectrum, and get them to agree on anything regarding guns.

It didn't turn out the way we expected.

It actually

taught us something really important, and we have that coming up next hour as we sent Riaz Batal out to do our evil bidding.

Let's go to Kelly in Oregon.

Jeez, God bless you, Kelly.

How are you?

I'm good, Mr.

Beck.

How are you doing this morning?

I'm good, but I don't have Antifa running cities in my state.

I know, I know it's a little bit scary here in Oregon.

It is.

it is actually.

I live in Springfield, which is a little bit more conservative than other places.

But I wanted to say thank you for your book.

I'm listening to it on audio, so it's a lot of fun.

You did a great job.

Thank you.

I wanted to say thank you for your references in the food section.

That's a little misleading because I think I talk about food a lot.

Okay.

Well,

let me tell you what it is.

Where you take it,

the McDonald's one and the

31 flavors with Baskin Robbins

explaining President Trump.

I have been able to use those references in saying that there are some good things about him to my liberal friends.

You don't have to like everything about him, but there are some good things.

I mean, you like McDonald's.

I mean, you like the French fries.

So you don't hate everything about McDonald's.

You like the fries, right?

And so I've been able to kind of use that in a joking way and kind of to get them to maybe see a little bit of, I like him a little bit.

You don't have to like him personally.

So anyways, I just really enjoyed that part about your book and being able to use that because I can laugh about it.

Yeah.

We can laugh without food.

And so anyways.

Kelly, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Stay strong in Oregon.

We'll send you a copy of the book signed to you.

Listen,

the point I make in the book about McDonald's is

it's one way you can tell if people are being disingenuous.

If you have nothing good to say about someone, I mean, nothing.

Everything is bad.

Really?

Really?

I mean, even

people who,

you know,

were trying to say something good about Adolf Hitler,

the Audubon.

The Audubon, okay, doesn't really outbalance or outweigh the other, but okay.

You can't find anything, and I compared the news coverage to a bunch of people who are just telling you that everything about McDonald's sucks.

Everything.

If they don't mention that they, okay, but I got to tell you, the fries are the best fries ever.

If they can't admit that McDonald's fry is superior, even if they hate everything else,

they're not an honest broker.

They're not an honest broker.

It's called a Neg McMuffin, too, by the way.

And a McGriddle.

I could go on,

and I could have, but I didn't.

Let me go to Aaron in Indiana.

Hello, Aaron.

Hey, Glenn.

What an honor it is to speak with you.

Thank you, sir.

After reading the book, I mean, I had a roller coaster

ride of different emotions, and the thing that struck me the most is

the algorithms that are being programmed, you know, retaining life and death.

And

as a nation, I haven't even heard of it before, your book, and nobody's speaking about it.

Yeah, and it's kind of a big one, isn't it?

I'm trying to remember what it's called.

What is it from MIT, Stu.

Remember I brought that in?

It's, oh, shoot.

I can't remember what the name of it is now from MIT, but MIT is now doing research on who lives and who dies.

It's basically the complete complete live system, except it's going to be for your auto-driving car.

And it will be able to know who's in the car, who's on the sidewalk, who's in the crosswalk.

It will know their value to society, what their job is, how old they are.

Are they sick?

Are they well?

And it will calculate in a fraction of a second who dies, who lives, where do I steer the car.

That's being decided now.

Are you involved in that at all?

Because I'm not.

And that's pretty frightening.

That's pretty frightening.

Aaron, thank you so much.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Glenn.

You bet.

Oh, no, I had look at my children and then hear, you know,

hear about these things.

And it just saddens me that, yeah, as a nation,

we can't even get past

simple things, let alone, you know, these life-changing decisions being made.

So thank you.

You You bet, Aaron.

Thank you so much.

Sean, you've read Addicted to Outrage.

Welcome to the program.

Hey, Gret, how are you?

Very good.

Good.

Yeah, you know,

one of the things that really surprised me as I was going through reading it, and it was,

you know, I went back to school at 40, you know, disabled vet, you know, so I end up going back to college.

And I end up becoming friends with a really, really, really liberal professor.

You know, I mean, head of the LBGT,

you know, I mean, really, really liberal, and I'm really, really not.

Right.

And I can never understand why nobody on campus could understand how we could be friends.

You know, well, after reading Addicted to Outrage, no, I get it.

You know, because We could sit there and we could discuss problems, right?

We could agree on the problem.

Now, we couldn't agree on how to fix the problem, but we could have a civil conversation between the two of us and agree that it was a problem.

Now, nobody else

could sit there and even agree that it was a problem.

They had a right over it.

So, is your, did you read the section yet about the unum?

You know, I'm about halfway through.

Okay.

You got to forgive me.

I'm in a little bit of a brain frog.

No, no, no.

That's fine.

That's fine.

I've got a lot of free concussions through my military service.

So

that's right now.

Are we taking care of you as a country?

Yeah, actually, I'm one of the fortunate ones.

But

I'm also a jerk about it and fight to make sure that they

do the right thing.

Good.

Sean,

when you get to the unum part, you will, I think, possibly, and I would love for you to call back and tell me if this is right, you will possibly understand why the two of you can get along.

If it's not because of that,

I really want to know.

Because my thesis is that

we can fix this and we can come together, but

only if we can unite.

around the things that brought us together in the first place.

And that's the Bill of Rights.

That allows people to disagree and walk away from each other without hating, because you understand you have a right to believe that.

And if you have the same unim of the Judeo-Western culture, which is, you know, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, don't kill.

Well, those things are what brought us together.

Our Judeo-Christian culture and our Bill of Rights.

If we have those things in common, we can unite.

Unfortunately, the people people in Antifa do not have those things.

The Nazis do not have those things.

I think the parties are disavowing those things because, well, it'd take everything we have to win.

The people, if they're reminded,

I believe they do have those things.

We just don't believe the other person has it as well.

When we can find that in the other person,

Ten Commandments, man, forget about the God stuff.

Thou shalt not kill, we shouldn't sleep with you know the neighbor, the neighbor's wife, I shouldn't covet what you have.

You know, all those things: lie, cheat, steal, and the Bill of Rights.

You have those,

we can fix it.

Find those people

Interested to see what Haley, Nikki Haley, has to say about her resignation.

We'll get to that.

It is an interesting world.

We're not going to have a problem with the tour.

I don't know.

Lots of material.

Lots of material.

I mean, you never know in these things.

You never know what kind of news cycle you're going to be in.

Sometimes you have fun stuff to talk about.

Sometimes you don't.

Not a problem anymore.

This is not.

This is going to be fun.

He's providing plenty.

Yeah.

We could either laugh or we could cry.

So let's get together and laugh.

It is the Addicted to Outrage tour,

the antidote to, you know, other options of like hanging yourself, living in a closet, just crying yourself to sleep every night.

Get your tickets at Glennbeck.com slash tour.

Come to San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Richmond, Hershey, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, Evansville, Tulsa, Tampa, and Orlando.

Yeah.

And I've got some suggestions for the Democrats, you know, who they should run in 2020, what their platform should be, maybe some of their programs.

Because I believe I could out-socialize socialists.

And so why not?

Why not help them out just a bit?

You're a helper.

That's who you are as a person.

Grab your tickets now at glenbeck.com slash tour.

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Send Riez Patel out for

an assignment, if you will, to see

Can we get a group of people together, all different walks of life?

I mean the most hardcore progressive to the most hardcore conservative, and get them in a room and get them talking about

guns and school shootings.

And can we

try

to get all of them to come to an agreement on anything?

Will they listen to one another?

Can you foster this conversation?

We learned something that we didn't expect.

Were you surprised by all of this, Stu?

Yeah, I mean, it was, it's an enlightening journey kind of through this because you could see that it's not as easy as you want it to be.

You know,

all the hesitations that we always talk about, you know, dealing with people who disagree with you, it's hard sometimes, man.

And like they, you know, they say things that are so stupid, you feel like, and you just want to, you want to just be.

I don't want to give away the discovery here because it's not what I would have expected.

And

many ways, you understand

why it happened.

You absolutely understand.

One side will not understand it.

The other side will understand it.

But any fair person looking at the whole thing can go, ah.

It's an amazing science experiment.

It really is.

It really is.

Now,

so what do we do with this?

Well, we had him put together a group of people and had him meet in some conference room and just have a conversation with male, female,

you know, very liberal, very progressive, very conservative, very Christian, you know, all of them, all walks of life, and have a conversation about school shootings.

We take you through that journey next with the audio, and Riaz joins us

and it is truly

it's truly important and um

and you will learn something really i think important

yeah i mean you know you usually don't force yourself to be in these situations and that's why it's kind of the excience experiment right like i feel like i this sort of stuff happens less and less in america where people are just like honestly trying to talk about an uncomfortable issue.

That weird thing that we always say about like, don't talk about religion or politics, is like

it's understandable, and I avoid them all the time at these, you know, by parties and stuff, because I don't want to deal with it.

But it does hurt the way that we actually

our ability to persuade people to our point of view, or maybe to learn something that we didn't consider.

Well, you know, if you were a missionary, the last thing you would do is go over to Asia and tell them how stupid Buddha is.

Yeah.

And that's what we're doing.

Yeah.

The Westboro Baptist Church is going to designs over, like, you know, God hates Buddha.

It's not going to be a good thing.

It's not going to work.

And

especially the left is using the Westboro Baptist Church tactics

because it, you know, politics has become religion for a lot of people.

We can't do that.

You will not sway anyone.

Anyone.

And remember, somebody has been swayed who was a family member in the Westboro Baptist Church.

How did it happen?

Kindness, reason, logic,

kindness, kindness, kindness.

And that person actually got out and is wide awake now and sees the evil, but she could not see it while the crowd was screaming, you know, you're wrong, you're going to go to hell.

Well,

really?

I'm going to hell.

Well, you're going to hell because you, you know, God hates this.

Whatever.

Play a different game.

Play the winning hand.

You can find out all about it at Addicted to Outrage, the new book that's in stores everywhere.

Addicted to Outrage.

Our science experiment has Glenn Back Mercury.

Glenn Beck is coming live to talk about the right path forward and to make fun of the people standing in the way.

He might not be able to save the country, but at least we can all go down laughing.

Glenn Beck Live, the Addicted to Outrage tour, on tour this fall.

Glenn Beck.

We want to try something a little different this hour.

I want to talk about a major issue, but I don't want to get stuck in the same rut.

So let me bring in my friend Riaz Patel.

He hates the labels, and so do I, because I hate the labels that, you know, I have.

You're a progressive, gay, Muslim, immigrant, left-handed,

well, I am too, Hollywood producer.

Yes.

um and there's no reason we should be friends no because of your labels you are a conservative anti-gay anti-minority so you know what's amazing about that is those labels that i gave you were actual things a part of you almost everything you said about me was not true i was saying but i'm thinking about what before we met yes yeah so i'm thinking about before we met what i came in thinking you were right and we became good friends and we still disagree on stuff many things but um we're good friends.

When we met, things that you have said changed the way I see the country, the world.

And I think there's real importance in having friends, having relationships with people who think completely differently from you.

Because we are in the situation now where it's us versus them.

Yes.

And there is no them.

There shouldn't be, because I think it's us versus the problem.

Whatever the problems are, it's all of us on one side.

But the more we demonize each other, the more it feels like we're against each other.

And there's no nuance.

There's no nuance.

It's either I'm absolutely right and you're absolutely wrong, or, you know, you're thinking that about me.

And this is kind of why we wanted to do this podcast.

So the premise is simple.

Can we look at the things that divide us in a way that from a different angle, maybe a more human perspective, a more personal perspective that allows us to see the connections?

So I gave you the impossible task.

See if you can have a reasonable conversation with people on all sides about guns.

Guns, this constant gun debate.

And the reason we chose guns, because it seems like a funny topic for the first one, is that inspired by all these school shootings that have been happening, we all want the same thing.

We don't want the children to be harmed.

So, knowing we all want the same goal, how do we work together to achieve that goal?

And so, this journey of exploring how do real Americans engage with each other, this whole thing started with the simplest, simplest sounds because you're a father and I'm a father.

And so, this whole thing started with these little voices.

That's Zara, who's two, pointing out that it's raining and that I need an umbrella, Tenzing.

Her little brother is one

and agrees.

Generally speaking, I am a liberal.

So this is the sound that the children of a liberal make as they eat pieces of French toast before school.

And this is the sound that the children of conservatives make as they eat their breakfast.

Soon our kids will intermingle and mix as we take them to school.

And as they all say their hies, I say my goodbye.

And sometimes, not every time, but sometimes when I leave, I think

that thought.

Please don't let anything...

bad happen here.

A thought I'm sure all parents have from time to time.

But when a school shooting has happened, instead of coming together to make sure it never happens again, we divide.

Shame!

Shame!

You're ruining this country.

Jesus would not be holding those signs.

Better cowards and in the pockets of the NRA.

And we demonize each other even more in the endless gun debates that follow it's the guns stupid freeloading them democratic liberals are much more concerned with the moral issues than republicans

a little bit at a time and we accept it and we accept it and before long we won't have that our approach to debating this is you don't support the second amendment and you support mass killings and certainly there's something in the middle

but we all want the same exact thing to keep all those french toast eating kids safe.

So this was my question.

In an increasingly divided America, how do we work together to achieve the same thing?

Keeping our children safe at school?

So a few weeks ago, I asked seven very different Americans to sit down with me and help me find an answer.

And we did.

We found an answer, but it wasn't at all what I thought it would be.

The answer, as it turns out to my complete surprise, is a single-digit number.

A number that was hastily written on a pink post-it note and passed over to me with a handful of others as part of a kind of warm-up exercise as the seven were just sitting down to begin our conversation.

As you hear me read all the numbers back to the group several weeks ago, six, three,

ten, ten, or one, one.

Keep in mind, one of them is our answer forward.

Let me start by telling you about the seven.

I am a high school teacher, mother of three boys, three teen boys.

I am a firearms instructor.

I was a police officer in Arlington Police in Virginia for 37 years.

I wanted their politics to be very, very different.

I would be probably considered a constitutional conservative.

I find the older that I get, the more progressive and liberal that I become.

I am very much

on both sides.

I always vote for the person that scares me the least.

I even wanted their experiences and feelings about guns to be different.

My stepdad from the South.

He had a shotgun in the closet.

Kids or not, he had a shotgun in the closet.

I'm a retired Navy combat pilot.

We have guns in our home.

They are locked up.

I've never seen them.

I don't want to see them.

Ask me how I started shooting.

I just stay with my dad and his redneck buddies out in the country.

These seven were thoughtful, well-informed, good-hearted people who all agreed to spend an entire evening talking to people people they didn't even know.

Why?

To come up with a list.

I wanted us to find a list, even if it was a very short one, of specific, practical things that we could all agree upon to help combat this intangible threat to our kids that we all think about from time to time.

An intangible threat that Alicia, our teacher in the room, explained from the perspective of being inside the schools each and every day.

Anytime there is any sort of anything out of the norm at school, the kids get weird, they get upset.

It's just a feeling among the entire school that something is dreadfully wrong.

And I think it's all over the country.

I think that you hear a noise in the hallway when your class is quiet and everyone's head turns.

With that awareness, we began talking.

The story of that conversation has two parts.

The content, the stuff that was said, and then the impact.

What happened because of what was said.

So, content.

As we searched for the list for almost four hours, I'd like to share with you the three biggest impediments we came up against.

Because in this new era of communicating and communication, I think they're worth considering.

Remember, same children, Same goal.

Impediment number one, opinions outnumber people.

I soon realized that in this age of unlimited access to opinions, that although there were seven people physically sitting around me, there were many more opinions and voices brought into our conversation.

Listen to the following exchange between two mothers, Anna, a progressive, and Mona, a Christian conservative, and see how many people's opinions and perspectives are brought into the mix.

other than their own.

From my side, what I hear is, oh,

I don't infringe on any of my rights and I don't want any restrictions on myself.

And it's kind of, and I'm not saying this is what you are, but this is kind of the debate that's been in place.

And it's kind of like, come on, there are reasonable ideas we can come up with that's not going to inconvenience you.

But, and you're right, there are probably solutions there, and you're reasonable, but the leaders of your movement are not reasonable.

That's actually.

Why is it that when there's a school shooting or a mass shooting someplace, the first thing we hear is we need gun control and the NRA is the bad guy.

Bad guy.

Bad guy.

So many other opinions and voices, most of them extreme, jumped right into our conversation on minute 39.

Everything was heightened from the get-go.

Denise, our firearms instructor who almost missed the roundtable because she had food poisoning, speaks about the problem with letting other people speak for us.

The inflammatory, super, you know, agitators that are being the talking heads on the media is speaking for you, speaking for me.

They don't represent that kind of craziness does not represent me.

And I would like to think that when I see these ultra-liberal, you know, screaming about all this stuff and calling people like me gun nuts and all that, I would like to think that that's not representative of you.

So how do we solve that problem with getting these people to stop being being the ones that are out there trying to send a message?

Because it's, for me, I think it's the wrong one and it's not productive.

I became aware very quickly that it's almost impossible to have a productive conversation with so many other voices referenced and repeated.

How could I get each person just to speak for themself?

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For me, one of the most eye-opening things, and I think it was the same for you, and you had asked me something about

why had had i said the things that i had said about president obama and it wasn't the inflammatory stuff it was why did you think he was so bad or why did you think that administration is so bad and i i gave you several stories and i i remember going with the chalkboard and i said there was this story did you know about it yeah this story this story

you'd never heard of any of them any of them and that that was the beginning of my awareness of how loud and separate these echo chambers are and that was the moment i was like oh no people, we think they know things.

We think they hear things.

They don't.

They don't.

And you know what?

Because of that moment, I redoubled my efforts to read.

There are many times that I'll hear people say, well, you won't find that in the Times.

Actually, yes, that's exactly where I found it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean?

And so when we talk about the problems,

we have those in common, that whether it's keeping our children safe, whether it's drugs, whether it's the weaponization of information, those are big problems that we need to discuss.

But the in-person quality of it has to happen because

it's posting these awkward, awkward things.

Even though it got hot.

It's difficult to come up with a solution where one side doesn't want to talk about guns at all.

And I'm sure you guys think that's all we want to talk about is I want to come take away your guns.

And that's not the case.

Impediment number two.

We can't hear all the options.

Potential solutions may already be on the table, but we aren't even hearing each other.

This exchange between Anna, our progressive mother, and Chad, a libertarian father, shows this phenomenon.

All we're trying to see is what reasonable measures

are you all willing to agree to to help solve this problem and to really solve this?

And what steps are you willing to take?

But I'm not...

I'm not willing to sign on to the NRA's Project Exile, which has worked very well in Virginia.

So what was Anna's response to Project Exile?

What is that, sir?

I don't know.

Project Exile?

Oh, committing you committed gun crime, mandatory sentencing.

You go to the top of the rocket docket for prosecution.

A practical, tangible solution already on the table.

Never heard of it.

But wait, this wasn't a one-way phenomenon.

Soon after, Mona, our mother of three teenage boys, was explaining how her sons and their peers can sense when a a classmate may pose a threat.

And they're called school shooters.

Oh yeah, he's a school shooter.

She's a school shooter.

They've got that label because everybody knows who is capable of doing that.

True.

I think that's what, you know, what I mentioned earlier, the red flag laws.

I think that's the purpose of those, where you see a kid who is, you know, like this kid is trouble.

And that enables you to go in and remove the guns.

And the response from Alicia, our teacher in the room, who had literally just been talking about kids exhibiting red flags, had this to say about the idea.

I had never heard the term red flag law.

How is that even possible?

On my side, I hear the term red flag laws almost daily in campaign ads.

But Alicia lives in a different state and gets different ads.

Again, it's not about whether you think either of the ideas are good ones or bad ones.

It's about the fact the other side has never even heard of them.

When we're talking about trying to protect our kids, shouldn't every idea be considered?

Impediment number three, either or thinking.

This is another exchange that fascinated me between Anna, our progressive mother, and Mona, who identifies as a Christian conservative, about what each of us can do now to help keep our children safer.

I know from my side is, you know, reaching out to my legislators and saying, this is what I want.

And if the legislators refuse to take action, it's helping to elect people who will, who are more in line with those thoughts.

And perhaps on your side, you can do the same.

But we all have a part to play in this.

And first is making our voices heard.

It might be futile, but that's one step we can all take.

If we started even

one step,

I can't find the right word.

Take one step back and start at a community level instead of relying on our legislators to fix this problem.

So you go into the schools and you say to your principal, I'm a retired Marine and my two kids go to this school and I really want to help keep this building secure.

This is all I can do.

I can only work within the confines of my life in my time, but I'm a parent here.

I have expertise.

I want to do something.

How can we gather the parents in this school to help fortify the build?

I think there probably, there's so many restrictions and issues against, I mean, I don't know.

I'm not involved in the school system, but.

Two approaches both felt valid and worthwhile to me, but in that moment, it felt very either or and a little dismissive.

And this this happened a lot jumping back and forth between opposing ideas as opposed to spending time discussing, integrating them, or combining the approaches.

And I just hope that the divide over the first approach, the constant fight over election day, doesn't demonize us so much that we aren't able to work together on the second community-level approach.

We need both, not either or.

So those three impediments, opinions outnumbering people, not hearing all the options, and and either or thinking, were our biggest obstacles as we searched together for my list.

And as we talked,

they have to be their mental health as well.

And talked?

Yeah, I think that has to be part of the guns out of danger.

We just kept running up against them.

But then also you can't.

Well, the danger is the child.

And never got around them.

If there are weapons that he could then use to act out of of the middle.

So let's take out all the knives out of the kitchen too and remove the cars to

finish too.

In the room hour after hour, it was tense, defensive, and hot.

The air conditioning wasn't working and my premise wasn't working.

And I feel like that's what happens a lot.

Both sides, every time.

Somebody gives an example.

Somebody else tells you why that example is not going to work for them specifically, and then it turns it to a different conversation.

My stupid list was only making us more frustrated the more we couldn't find it.

Because although there were so many moments of connection, it was the moments of disconnect that controlled the mood of the room.

We already have the laws on the books for exact weeks.

We do not, we do not.

There are laws.

But you see, there's 25,000 of them.

You're willing to let

all of those go just for your point.

And then it happened.

The moment I had been fearing.

We reached it.

Now, are you willing to put Sumbers?

That's the impasse.

Because you're not even willing to listen.

No.

The impasse.

Soon after, Anna summed up how a lot of us were feeling.

Coming in here,

I thought our chances of getting a list together was, I was more optimistic.

You know, I see why we are where we are today.

It's this sort of, you know, impasse.

The conversation ended shortly after.

We all said goodbye, and I sat in the room alone and texted my husband two words.

It failed.

I could not get the enemy lines to go away in that room, even for a little while.

But I was wrong.

There's content,

and then there's impact.

Glenn, back.

Mercury.

How surprised were you that

this fell apart?

Because to me,

that's where they all end.

Right there.

Yes.

I was not just shocked, but personally gutted because I had found all these people.

And with the best of intentions, I had said, look, out there in the world, no one's talking.

Let's try and create this environment with the seven of us that we can

go past that.

We will know each other.

You're all good people.

And I could not believe that with all that prep of them coming in, that the guards went up.

And she was

integrated.

It's not the seven people.

It's all of the voices that are in each of their heads that they're all battling.

I understand why he said what he said and cut her off.

And it has nothing to do with the people in that room.

Exactly.

The people in that room could compromise.

Could potentially, hypothetically, yes.

Yes.

And so.

If that was their community and it was only about them, they could come up with it.

The next day,

I honestly couldn't get out of bed.

And when I looked at my phone, there were this flurry of texts and emails from other people in the room saying, how did we miss?

We all tried.

We missed.

So what did you find out?

Well, what was interesting was that one of the texts was an invitation from Denise, our firearms instructor, to Anna, our progressive activist mother, saying, you want to continue the conversation?

Why don't you come down to the shooting range?

And we can.

And so I conveyed this and Anna accepted in a second.

I was shocked.

And so the next day, this progressive activist went to the shooting range at the base of the NRA's building to continue the conversation with this firearms trainer.

And that's where we go now.

Of course, I'm going to take out an AR-15.

Okay, okay.

Happy to try out.

And I'm also going to start you off on a 22 semi-automatic handgun, very low recoil.

Okay.

And as I somewhat nervously watched them engage each other one-on-one, the memory of their interaction from not even 48 hours prior was still pretty fresh.

But I think

that's a good thing.

That has to be hard to remove the guns out of the house.

They began this new conversation with basics.

So, how do you take the safety off?

Because they say, keep the safety on, and then take the corner.

So, if it has,

it depends on the specific type of firearms.

So, this one

and then they started talking more specifics.

This is Denise explaining some of the the existing gun laws that don't make sense.

So if someone were to hold this like this and put it up against their shoulder, well, you're now shooting it like a rifle, so now you're in violation of the law and you're technically a felon.

Why would there be an issue if you're holding it as a rifle?

Why would it be considered illegal?

Because now

one of the pieces is not registered as a rifle.

You didn't purchase it as such.

So if you purchased it as a pistol and now you're shooting it as a rifle, they're saying that now you're in violation of the law.

Again,

complete, makes absolutely no sense.

And then this happened as they were talking about bullets.

Extremely much larger bullet, tons more powder.

This is a 308, so that's a typical hunting round.

So you can just see the difference in the power and penetration between the bullets and the amount of powder that goes in them.

So size does matter.

I love that.

And as they giggled over a size joke,

that was it.

The enemy lines weren't there anymore between them.

It was no longer us versus them, Anna versus Denise.

They were on the same side, just two people, trying to figure something out.

They had connected.

Let's go shoot some guns.

This is Anna, coached by Denise, through her first shot.

Sights.

Shoulders forward.

Focus on that front suck.

Slow, steady.

Good.

Finger off the

job.

And for the record, her shot was just off the bullseye.

And afterwards, they started talking specifics again.

But there was a willingness to work together.

and limit the number of opinions to their own.

So it's like, okay, rather than you and I like meeting in the parking lot and purchasing the gun or wherever, let's go to the licensed dealer, run a background check on me, so make sure that I'm not a felon, I don't have a history of domestic violence, etc., and then just hand the gun off in that sense.

So it's not.

The big argument with that is going to be that

we're guilty until proven innocent.

You know what I mean?

I'm not 100% against it because that's pretty much how I do things now.

I'm just saying

I'm like 80% there, if that makes sense.

I mean, you're like, bring you over.

To repeat, Denise says, I'm 80% there.

Anna excitedly responds by saying, I'll bring you over.

But it's what Denise says next that got me.

Or you come 80, I come 80.

We figure out somewhere in the middle.

I love that.

You come 80.

I come 80.

And we figure out somewhere in the middle.

One-on-one, there was a personal connection now.

Anna, who who just the other night felt so hopeless.

You know, I see why we are where we are today.

It's this sort of, you know, impasse.

Now, not even 48 hours later, had this to say.

We're really on most of it, like 80% of it, we're all on the same side, like of the issue.

It's just we may be speaking a different language.

There's nuance.

And how do we understand someone's different language and nuance?

By spending time with them in person.

This is how Anna felt when I spoke with her a few weeks later.

To come back and to sort of have formed some sort of a bond with the, you know, NR, someone who worked with the NRA as their top trainer and stuff, I mean, that was that was a refreshing surprise.

And that sort of thank God for that, because that sort of gave me a glimmer of hope that, okay,

we can come to some sort of an agreement.

The problem isn't always the other person.

The problem isn't always the other side.

Denise explained how this shifted.

For you two to come out to the range with me, just

putting your toes in the world of another person and understanding it, actually getting to see it were not the problem.

Weeks later, Denise and I spoke about her perspective on America after our time together.

It's just a very combative,

you know, very argumentative environment, and it doesn't have to be.

It doesn't have to be, you know, you can agree to disagree on things, but, you know, like what you're trying to do find some things that you do agree on and i don't think that it is that hard it isn't that hard

so the question remained how did we get to this point of connection and optimism what had happened in the room during the conversation with the seven that had prompted denise to want to reach out to anna and invite her to the gun range in the first place It's like just people being open, I think is the first step too.

That's what's important.

That's why I appreciated talking to the other night.

Yeah, well, thank you.

Because I know there were others who were not so open

to see the side.

And it was just, I know it wasn't.

It was frustrating on both sides.

Was it?

Yeah.

Did you feel that?

I mean, that's why I started defending her.

I was getting pissed.

Defending her?

That's right.

The moment of impasse.

Now, are you willing to put some response to the

exact same thing?

That's the impasse because you're not even willing to listen.

No.

Remember when I said there was more in that moment than I had realized?

There's Denise defending Anna by saying you can't do that to her.

That's the impasse.

So what happened in that moment?

I asked Denise later.

I just felt very angry that someone that was supposed to be sharing my point of view and my perspective was being blatantly disrespectful,

completely shut off to a human being sitting next to me.

Honestly, just like I needed to defend her.

Whether she was on my side, their side, it didn't matter.

In that moment, the moment of impasse, the enemy lines had actually shifted.

Someone on the complete opposite end of the issue became an ally to Denise when there was a greater obstacle to overcome.

What greater obstacle?

So I went back to the audio of the roundtable and listened to it.

Six.

Don't improve in any of my writings.

Three.

Not reasonable.

Ten or one.

And there it was.

One.

Again and again, the obstacle to consensus so many of the times was the same person, Rick.

Now, are you willing to put some response?

It wasn't his ideas.

The majority of the room shared his ideas on, well, pretty much everything.

It was his approach to the conversation.

He became the greater obstacle.

Many times we would all agree to an idea, but in going around around the room for consensus, we'd hit the block.

Is that fair for everyone around?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But the problem is.

Here I am in hour two anticipating his block to a new idea.

A role I think he knew he was playing.

Thoughts about that?

What are you looking at me for?

In hour three, here I am again.

And I'm asking you specifically because you're the- you're my- you're my nemesis right now.

And then this happened.

Now, are you willing to put some

It wasn't the content of what he was saying.

It was the way he was saying it, the intention behind it.

And that was because of his number.

The number he had walking in.

Eight, four,

six, three,

ten, ten, or one.

Remember those numbers?

As the sound guy was setting up, as people were sitting down and sipping their water nervously, I wondered how could I measure measure the degree of hope that they were bringing to this roundtable?

How could I gauge their commitment to finding my list?

So just as audio started recording, you hear me ask them, How do you think it is likely one to ten of finding some sort of consensus, some sort of

what do you honestly believe and then hand it to me?

Numbers were privately passed to me at the beginning of the conversation and never referred to again until it was time to leave three hours and 46 minutes later.

Here is the actual moment the conversation ended, and the numbers are revealed.

You'll hear Rick at the end.

It's tough.

It's a tough one.

Can't wait to see where our numbers come out.

What

the numbers are.

It was

8, 4,

6, 3,

10, 10, or 1.

1.

1.

But then there's a 0 right next to it.

9.

0 to one that was your range point

interesting rick was a one

we never had a chance

in fact the next day he sent me an email saying quote riaz i think this was a good cause but the impasse is far too wide a chasm to be crossed end quote

a one will always diminish the hope in any given room, just the way that negativity lately overwhelms whatever true hope there is out there.

We have all been a Rick.

For whatever reason or whatever mood, we've all been that person.

But a one is a very powerful thing, especially in a very divided America.

So to me, the answer for how do we move forward and work together to keep our children safer

is to be any number greater than one.

This is Denise at the end of our roundtable.

Denise, who went on to open up her world to show a fellow American that she isn't a them.

Denise's number is eight.

I'm loving sitting here and like my heart is going out to each one of you for your, you know, your viewpoints.

And I understand it.

It may not be one that I, you know, fully get on board, but I believe you and I know where you're coming from.

And I appreciate that.

I appreciate that.

What's interesting is Denise has been invited by Anna to attend her progressive groups, and Anna is taking progressive moms to the shooting range at the NRA to learn more.

Love it.

So the bridge is there.

The bridge starts with just sitting in the same room.

So Riaz, when I think about coming to a solution in Washington, I'm a zero.

When I think about the American people,

I'm an eight, nine.

It's funny because the only thing I said we never got my list.

I didn't say there was nothing we didn't agree on.

The only thing we all agreed on was that we had no faith in the government system that exists.

That was the only thing the seven of us all agreed on.

So I think that is part of the problem.

And I think the best progress that we have, the best shot we have, is one-on-one.

Thanks, Ryan.

My pleasure.

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I think you could see in

this

episode that

outrage stops us from talking to each other.

We don't trust each other.

We don't believe in one another.

And we

stop using reason.

We just block and it always ends the same way, which stops us from doing all of the things that we can do.

We may never agree on guns, but man, look at all the other things that we can do.

If we can't get past the outrage, if we can't find our way to talk to one another, and there are ways, as you're seeing in this, if we can't do that, we're finished.

So, what's the plan?

What's the way where we all win?

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