Addicted To Outrage-Too Many Americans Have Gone Too Far: Later in the program, Glenn Beck will be with us to talk about his new book Addicted To Outrage. There is more outrage today than we’ve seen in a very long time where violence is now even being promoted by our leaders. Tune in now to learn more.

Air Date: 11/07/2018

Guest: Glenn Beck

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Faith And The Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live! Where we”€™re talking about today”€™s hottest topics on policy, faith, and the culture, all of it from a Biblical, historical, and Constitutional perspective.

We’re here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. Also, Tim Barton, national speaker, pastor, and president of WallBuilders. And my name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas state legislator, national speaker, and author.

 

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Later in the program, Glenn Beck will be with us to talk about his new book, Addicted To Outrage. You can find out more about our program at WallBuildersLive.com, where you can find a list of our stations around the country that carry the program. You can also get some of the archives and go back and listen to some of the good news Friday programs if you need a little pick-me-up, and know that you can make a difference by engaging in this culture.

You can listen to the Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs, dive further into those foundational principles, and some of those great interviews throughout the weeks. That’s all available at WallBuildersLive.com.

Then there”€™s WallBuilders.com, our main website. That’s where you can get great tools for yourself and your family, great curriculum programs, Sunday school programs, all kinds of things you can use to educate, equip, and inspire the folks in your life to be a part of the solution to actually help restore America’s Constitution. Then of course right there at WallBuilders.com you can come alongside us as a partner of WallBuilders by making a one time, or monthly, donation that helps us continue to spread this word and continue to make a big difference out there in the culture war that’s happening right now.

Addicted to Outrage

David, Tim, later in the program Glenn Beck will be with us. We’ll be talking about his book, Addicted to outrage.

Just to kind of set this up, I think there’s—people realize there is more outrage. It seems today that we’ve seen, in our lifetimes at least, that it is being communicated violently, or extremely loud if you will. It feels like that to me. Now, I’m not a child of the 60s, so I didn’t grow up watching some of those things, but it definitely seems out of control to most people today.

David:

Well, you definitely have a more demonstrative out-of-control behavior seen more frequently, and in more areas. In the 60s, yeah okay, yeah you had some demonstrative behavior on college campuses, but it”€™s not all of the students. It was just a handful of troublemakers. You had some against the police, where they would have protests against the police, and you had some against Vietnam veterans. It wasn’t everybody, but it was way too many.

By the way, it was not political leaders. You did not see political leaders jump into that, or jump to that level or encourage that behavior. Political leaders on both sides condemned that kind of violence and those kinds of attacks on individuals, whether it was verbal or physical. You’re now at a point where you’re not seeing leaders condemn that, you’re seeing leaders encourage that. You’re seeing leaders even try to participate and try to stir it up.

A Kind of Craziness We”€™ve Never Seen Before

So there is a level of outrage now that has permeated much deeper into the culture, that manifests itself in more settings, and more situations, and in more arenas than we’ve ever seen before. This is more polarized than what we’ve seen before, and not only is it polarized now—of course 1856 was polarized. There was some violence with 1856 as they were fighting over the abolition of slavery. So we’ve got some polarization here over a number of issues, not just one, but this is a different kind of a level than what we’ve seen.

I think this really is unprecedented, and the fact that the news media tends to whip it up, and stir it up, and they keep bringing guests on that encourage it, it’s a kind of a craziness that we really have never seen before.

Rick:

Well, Tim, it seems like we’re all part of the debate, if you will, that’s going on in the culture when we engage in discussion, and sometimes the people are obviously passionate. But we’re looking for a reason and discussion, kind of like the Founding Fathers had.

That’s why I love what WallBuilders does in terms of the way we present information. It’s quote, after quote, after quote of the Founding Fathers to make you really think through an issue, not just have a three second tagline, or something that incites a crowd, but that’s becoming hard in this age of Twitter with 140 or whatever characters, and people only wanting to think about two sentences instead of having to think through things. So how do you still engage people and not fall into this whole, “€œIncite the riot with a one liner,”€?

Intellect Cannot Overcome Emotion in a Debate

Tim:

I think the challenge, Rick, is it’s not the people—the sound bite idea is still so largely embraced, right? Even when you’re saying, “€œWe love to present quotes of The Founding Fathers,”€ well, you can present a sound bite of a quote, it doesn’t mean it”€™s going to be received, because we try to present a factual perspective.

One thing that historically has always been true is that intellect cannot overcome emotion in a debate. So even if you are presenting the facts, you cannot overcome someone’s emotional position by having better facts than them. They’re able to present from their frustrated position, and emotional perspective, whatever it is.

The challenge is you are not engaging on an intellectual playing field. You are engaging, when we are trying to present an intellectual, philosophical, a factual discussion, and you have people that are emotionally positioned to where, “€œI don’t care what you say. I don’t care what is objectively true, or what is constitutionally right or wrong, or what’s been historically accepted. I care about what I want, what I think, or what my leader has told me, and that’s what I’m going to go for.”€

The reason you see such a divide today is because you see sides abandoning facts, abandoning objective truth, just for their side to win. I think the biggest problem we’re facing is that now both sides are being drawn into a place where it’s not even about a battle for truth. It’s about a battle to win, and whose side is going to win.

“€œRemember the Principles that Guide Us”€¦”€

This is where it’s at a dangerous place for us as a nation. George Washington, in his farewell address, warned America that the love of party over principle would be very destructive in our nation. He warned against people just being a fan of their party. He said, “€œRemember the principles that guide us, that lead us upon which our nation is based.”€

And this is where the challenge with this soundbite generation, with this emotionally charged perspective, is that we no longer can emphasize principle. In fact, if you try to present principle, people accuse you of being hateful, or bigoted, or not politically correct, when we’re in a situation when—even with gender, and you say, “€œHey, why don’t we just use what science says? Where there’s an X and Y chromosome, and there’s a boy and a girl, based on this?”€

And they say, “€œOh my gosh, you’re hateful. You’re bigoted.”€

They argue from an emotional perspective. It’s an ad hominem attack. They attack the individual, and don”€™t focus on the argument because we’ve moved past what is true too, “€œI want my side to win, and we will win at all costs.”€

David:

Yeah. It did become that win-at-all-cost kind of stuff. That really does polarizes. It’s not that you’re looking objectively anymore, your emotions get involved with it. When your emotions get involved, your reason really does turn off. Tim, you’re exactly right.

You Always Want Your Team to Win”€¦ Right?

Tim:

It’s not like this is unusual or unique. Obviously all of us are sports guys, and in sports you always want your team to win, right? You don’t play sports to not win. You want to win. But when you forget the point is not just winning, especially if it comes to something political or something like the nation, it’s not, “€œI want my side to win.”€

You should want our nation to succeed and do better.

But this is so easy to fall into. In fact, somebody we”€™re going to have on the program in just a moment, one of the guys we’ve been friends with for a lot of years. It’s easy to get drawn into this polarization, and Glenn Beck is a guy we’ve known for years, we’ve done stuff with them a long time.

He even acknowledged he fell into that kind of trap. It’s so easy to go, “€œNo, I want my side to win. I can look at what the other side”€™s doing and they’re dumb.”€

In many cases, we know what they’re doing really is dumb. We don’t like it, but it’s easy to come to the place where that becomes a norm for us, and the norm is, “€œWe don’t like the other side and we’re going to win.”€

 

This Book Shows Where the Culture is

It’s easy to find their faults and to pick on them, and yet in the midst of doing it, the more we pick on the other side, the more we hate on the other side, the more we ostracize them, the more we are dividing our country.

This is why he wrote this new book, Addicted to Outrage, and right when it came out I got it on the audibles.

Now, I told both you guys this is a really good book.

For listeners, just so you know, there are a few adult words in the book. Sometimes he is actually quoting political leaders and officials where they use profanity. He puts their quote in there to show how they’re addicted to outrage, they like being angry, they like fighting the other side. He does such a good job showing exactly where culture is, and why we are addicted to this outrage, and why we want our side to win so bad that sometimes we lose sight of objective reality.

Certainly this is a book that I would recommend. Again, some adult words in there, so filter that as you might, but he’s somebody that certainly would be worth having on the program to talk about some of these concepts from the book.

Rick:

Glenn Beck, our special guest, the book is called, “€œAddicted to outrage.”€

Stay with us he”€™ll be with us when we return to WallBuilders Live.

Holy Land Tour

Hey guys! What are you doing. January 28 through February 7th? If you”€™ve said you don’t know, let me give you an idea. We are going to Israel, Rick Green, my dad David Barton, Tim Barton, and our families are going and we would love to go with us. We are going to the Holy Land.

If you’ve never been to Israel, this is something as a Christian that will make you forever read your Bible differently. To see where Jesus walked, where he lived, where he did miracles, were so much of the Bible took place.

If you’ve ever read the Bible and you’ve given a mental picture the mental picture will not do justice of what happens when you’re actually on the ground. Have you ever thought about the story of David and Goliath and you envision what it looks like, we’re going to go to the actual field where it took place!

There are so many things that you will see that literally makes the Bible come to life. In fact, that’s the name of the tour group we’re going with is the Bible Comes To Life. Go to CMJacksboro.com and you can click on the link. It has an Israel itinerary, all kinds of details, we hope to see you on this trip this coming year!

Welcome Glenn Beck

Rick:

We”€™re back on WallBuilders Live, thanks for staying with us. Glenn Beck is with us, he”€™s a great friend of the program and author of the new book, Addicted to Outrage. Glenn, thanks for coming on again, man.

Glenn:

You bet, you bet. How are things?

Rick:

Hey, listen man. Everybody is obviously—the violence that’s going on, the craziness in the country, it had to be somewhat of a motivation for writing this book. What you’re saying, thinking like a recovering addict, can help to heal these things.

David:

Now, let me interrupt for a minute, because you really got it wrong. Glenn started this book months and months ago. He knew exactly what was going to happen to the Kavanaugh hearings, and they wrote this to come out right in time to be able to address that. So it’s very good.

Glenn:

I wish I would have known the Kavanaugh hearings, because it’s a perfect example of how to win. This is not a book just about violence, as David knows. He’s been with me for a very long time, and we did the first March for Rights in Birmingham, the biggest one since Martin Luther King did, and that was what, David, four years ago?

We’ve seen this time coming, and it’s really important that people understand why the nonviolence and why kindness will work in this.

You Have to Stand Up

Also, you have to understand that you have to stand up. Martin Luther King had real spine, and he wasn’t backing down. He just was not being violent. In studying all of the movements of the past, from Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King, when you are standing up and you are saying, as Abraham Lincoln did, with malice toward none and charity to all, you actually win the hearts of the people of the West.

We’re on the edge, and we could go either way if we’re not doing it. Let me take Kavanaugh for example, if we’re not doing what the Republicans did with Kavanaugh, we lose it.

They would have punched back, and it was really hard to watch that. Watch what was happening to his children, watch what was happening to his family, and to his his life from here on out for generations they will only read about him with probably the first lines being that he was accused of gang rape and everything else.

It was hard to watch that.

But if Donald Trump and the Republicans had not treated Dr. Ford with respect, hadn”€™t listened to or treated her kindly, and really allowed her to speak, it wouldn’t have been effective if they would have belittled her, countercharged, made fun of her, mocked her, threatened violence, any of that. It would have ended very differently.

But because they played it properly, because they appealed to a sense of justice and fairness, the American people saw that. And at the end, when Kavanaugh stepped up, it was time for that righteous indignation, it connected and changed everything. So it’s the right way to play it, especially when you’re dealing with people who still have some bit of western Judeo-Christian principles left.

At Least Listen to the Other Side

Rick:

You recommend, Glenn, almost setting aside, at least for a time, that knee jerk righteous indignation that we tend to have. We see our country in trouble, but we tend to want to immediately blame everybody.

You’re saying, “€œHey, wait a second. Stop for a second and at least listen to the other side.”€

Glenn:

Yeah. I’m saying listen to the other side, not because I think you can convince them, and I’m talking—there’s a difference. I think this is really important. There is a difference between the left and the Democrats, and I mean the Democrats that are your neighbors. There are a lot of Democrats who like bigger welfare state, would like universal health care, but they’re not communist. They’re not even socialist. The left, as we’re seeing now, they are socialists. They are coming out and saying, “€œThe system doesn’t work. Capitalism cannot work. We’re going to rid ourselves of capitalism.”€

Those people we”€™re never going to be able to work with because they are set against the principles our country was founded upon. But there’s a lot of Democrats out there we have to listen to, sometimes more than we talk, because what I found in a lot of research, and listening to a lot of people who are really studying this, many times we”€™re saying almost the same things but we’re using different language, and we’re just missing each other.

We Can Connect in our Sense of Humanity

What we can connect with is this sense of humanity and decency, because most of us have this in common. There is about 80 percent of this country, maybe 70 percent of this country I think the actual number is, who are considered the Exhausted American. It is the Americans that says, “€œI just want to get on with my life. I don’t want Washington to rule and make every decision for me. I want a rule of law. I don’t like this bickering back and forth and name calling.”€

That’s how you save the country, is appeal to those people.

Rick:

What do you say to people, Glenn, that say, “€œWe’re just too divided. We’re too different, we believe different things now, and so there’s not common ground.”€

Where do you start with the common ground.

Glenn:

Well, I have thought for a long time, and I’ve wondered what”€™s going to bring us back together? I write about it in the book, I call it the Unum. E Pluribus, Unum. From Many, One.

E Pluribus, Unum

What was that one? How did we come together when we were so different? We didn’t even speak the same language when we came here. We had different cultures. You look at the mass immigration of the 1900’s, what was it that brought people here, and made it so we could live together? In the end, it is the American idea.

It is the idea in the Declaration of Independence that we’ve never really lived fully. We’ve had times where we were closer to that, and we were further away. That’s our job, to strive for a country where all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain rights. Our unum is that American idea, and it is the Bill of Rights, with an exception probably of the Second Amendment, we as a nation, 90 percent of us agreeing on the Bill of Rights.

You don’t talk about them in the way our founders did and just read them out like that. But if you say, “€œHey, you think the government has a right to spy on people? Should they do that? Do they have a right to come into your house and take your stuff, or take you and haul you away without charging you? Don’t you have a right to face your accuser?”€ Most people will agree with the Bill of Rights, and that’s what brought us here in the first place. That’s what created this country, the idea of the Declaration of Independence and its implementation through the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

T.H.I.N.K

Rick:

So really, articulating the original values, but doing it in a terminology that people can relate to. That’s really what you’re saying.

Glenn:

It is. And thinking before we speak. It’s more critical than ever that we think before we speak.

Emmanuel Hahn was a philosopher in the Enlightenment period, and he said something about this. I read it about 20 years ago, and it’s never left me. I’ve understood it in so many different ways. When I first read it, I couldn’t imagine living in a time where you would be afraid to say things.

His quote was, “€œThere are many things that I believe, that I shall never say, but I shall never say the things that I do not believe.”€

That is a statement of noncompliance. I will not comply. I’m sorry, there are two sexes. But it”€™s also, there are many things that I believe that I shall never say, is everything that we say, is it truly necessary?

I talk about this in the book, towards the end of the book, about my mom always saying think before you to speak. And boy, that would have saved me a lot of hassle. But there was this acronym that I found, that I thought was a really good thing.

THINK:

T is for, “€œIs it Truthful?”€

H, “€œIs it Helpful?”€

I, “€Is it Inspiring?”€

N, “€œIs it Necessary?”€

K, “€œIs it Kind?

If we would just go through that list before we say something, “€œIs it truthful? Do we know it’s truthful? Will it help things move forward? Am I lifting people up? Is it inspiring? Do I have to say it? Is it necessary? Is it based in a spirit of kindness?

We Can Agree on a Lot

If we can all just think before we speak, that would change the dialogue a great deal.

As I’ve talked about for many years, there’s going to come a time where people are not going to know what to do or where to go, it will be confusing and full of chaos. You have to be calm enough and have enough credibility to say to people who are running in the wrong direction, “€œStop! Don’t go there! Come here.”€

We have to be the people that are standing out, and are peculiar, and are different. When they see everybody at each other’s throats they can say, “€œI don’t want to be a part of that. These guys look like they have an answer. They’re not tearing each other apart, and they’re good people and they’re just living life. I want to go with them.”€

That’s who we have to be.

David:

You know, Glenn, I think you’ve made a huge point, in that you’re not going to get everybody on board. You’re not talking necessarily to all Democrats, the philosophicals, you’re talking to the ones that are Exhausted Americans, the 70 percent out there that have the common ground on the Bill of Rights etc.. I’ve been thinking, just the more I think about the title of your book, the more examples I’ve seen of it over recent weeks, the Addicted to Outrage.

Some Can”€™t be Agreed With

We got a call this morning from a young man whose a first year at law school, one of those kids we get to deal with, and he was in an elevator going to classes with a friend of his. A girl friend, not a girlfriend, but a friend who was a girl. And as he looked down on her sweater, he saw that she had this loose string kind of hanging on the sweater. He just reached down and pulled the string off the sweater.

There were two attorneys in the elevator with them who saw that, and they launched on him and went after him for sexual abuse and sexual assault, and how dare he. He walked to class. They followed him all the way to class screaming at him. All the way to class simply because he had taken the thread off her sweater. I thought, “€œThat is addicted to outrage.”€

It”€™s ridiculous on its face, but that’s their reaction. It’s like, “€œYou’re right. In something like that, you’re not going to find middle ground. You can’t have a discussion with them.”€

Those are the ones. So I think the acronym you gave was a really, really good one in places like that.

We Can”€™t Close our Hearts

Glenn:

David, you know as well as I do, we’ve talked about this for almost a decade, knowing that this was coming, and looking and trying to figure out why Bonhoeffer—and I’m talking physically, not spiritually—but why Bonhoeffer failed.

Bonhoeffer is this giant of a man in Germany that was trying to do what Abraham Lincoln did, and trying to do what Gandhi, and what Jesus, and what Martin Luther King would do, and it failed in Germany.

That’s because the people had already gone over the cliff. They had already closed their hearts and were no longer kind and gentle with each other. They had already closed their heart to those Judeo-Christian principles, and that’s why this outrage happened. You cannot allow it to feed back into you, because what did those two attorneys just teach him to do?

Don’t be kind. Don’t worry about other people, don’t even look at other people. That closes our hearts. Once the heart is closed, I’m telling you, if we miss this opportunity to save our nation we will be the darkest nation ever to cast a shadow on Earth. We will make the Nazis look like rookies with the technology that is coming our way. We have a great responsibility to keep our hearts soft, and open, and Christ like, or we become part of the problem.

Let Us Reason Together

Rick:

Alright friends, we’re going to pause that interview with Glenn Beck and pick up right where we left off tomorrow. Almost out of time for today, but David, Tim, just—he’s spot on in terms of what the atmosphere is, and the danger if we continue to go down this road. I think that’s the real reason for the book, is that this is a warning that if we don’t want to descend into total chaos, it starts with us. We’ve got to have that attitude of, “€œI’m willing to listen. I’m willing to hear others out and do the whole, “€˜Come Let Us Reason Together,”€™ instead of just shouting each other down.”€

David:

Yeah. I love what he said too, about how the Kavanaugh response actually was right, as Republicans did not try to retaliate. They kept their mouths shut. They were very kind and very cordial. That’s why you saw national polling start to break very favorably in their direction.

I had not heard the term, “€œExhausted Americans,”€ I think that’s a great term. I feel like that a lot, so tired of this nonsense, and the fact that 70 percent of Americans are in that category, he’s right. We still can unify around many things, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, those principles being part of it. Yeah, he’s right.

Second Amendment is pretty divisive, but outside of that there’s a lot we can still talk about and get unity on.

If we don’t do a tit for tat, if we don’t try to retaliate and say, “€œI’m going to one up you with what you did to me on Kavanaugh,”€ then there is hope of being able to reach those Exhausted Americans and bring them back into the fold.

Tune In Tomorrow for More WIth Glenn Beck

Rick:

Well, we’re going to pick up where we left off. We’ll be back with Glenn Beck, David Barton, and Tim Barton tomorrow. Don’t miss that program.

You can also go to WallBuildersLive.com right now and share this program with your friends or family.

Get it out there on Facebook and Twitter, and your other social media tools. And then also visit WallBuilders.com, because the tools that you need to be able to reason with folks, to actually be able to defend the constitutional principles that the nation was built upon, and also to bring people together around those principles. You got to know what those principles are. You got to know how they work. You got to know the impact that they have in the culture.

Addicted to Outrage

That’s what we have for you at WallBuilders.com, make sure you get some of those tools and use them for your own family, maybe your Sunday school class, or some other outlet in your community where you can be that leader. That’s sharing that information with them. You can also help us spread the word by adding us to stations across the country and around the world.

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We would greatly appreciate your support in coming alongside us and helping us to spread this word and restore America’s Constitutional Republic. Be sure to tune in tomorrow. Glenn Beck will be back with us for the conclusion of Addicted to Outrage. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live