Glenn Beck organizes global movement of peace and freedom

February 20, 2012

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Over the weekend news broke that Glenn Beck flew from the United States to Europe in order to organize an international movement of peace and freedom. He was invited to meet with leaders of several European Tea Party groups, and separately with several key officials in the Catholic Church. The meetings are the latest in a series of discussions that Glenn has had with major political and religious figures over the past few years. Again and again, Glenn’s conversations with these leaders have focused on looking beyond politics for solutions, but rather to individuals, personal responsibility, and faith. As part of this message, Glenn has called for the faithful to remain distinct and separate in theology, but to stand together as a people of faith. These ideas will culminate at Glenn’s “Restoring Love” event in Dallas, TX on July 28th at Cowboy’s Stadium.

When Glenn signed off of radio last Wednesday he gave little indication of where he was going except that it was a “special assignment” and his audience needed to tune in on February 20th to get the details. Last night, it was revealed that he had actually travelled to Europe in order to organize an international movement of peace and freedom.

Glenn was invited to Europe to speak with leaders from Serbia, Georgia, Milan, Rome, Germany, Austria, London, and Israel. These leaders had heard of Glenn’s work in America and in Israel and were interested in bringing his message of individual freedom and personal responsibility to their own countries. The meeting, organized by FreedomWorks and Mercury One, sought to bring people on the front lines of the freedom and peace movement overseas together to learn from one another and to find ways to work together to spread the message of freedom to their own communities and beyond.

Glenn told the assembled leaders that they were not alone, but that they had friends in America and in other European countries who were all working for individual freedom and personal responsibility.

Uniting with the international community has become increasingly important over the past several months, as these groups see America headed down the same path that Europe as been on for decades. Personal freedoms are being sacrificed in order to give the government expanded power in order to take care of the people, rather than let people take care of themselves. In Europe, this decades long trend toward socialism has been an utter failure, as best represented by the chaos and financial ruin of Greece. The assembled group was looking to not only understand why America would follow a path that is known to lead to failure and economic collapse, but also were hoping to learn from Glenn and FreedomWorks about America’s Tea Party movement and what they were doing to change the dangerous slide towards socialism.

While a wide range of problems and solutions were discussed, the overarching theme of the meeting was that politics alone would not change anything. Instead, it would take individuals uniting on a national and international level to restore personal responsibility, peace, and freedom.

Restoring Love, a three-day nonpartisan and non-political event, will celebrate personal freedom and faith as thousands unite to engage in service projects in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, culminating in an evening of celebration, inspiration, and reflection at Cowboys Stadium (Get more details HERE). Separately, FreedomWorks will be kicking off their peace and freedom initiative that week as well, more details to come.

Following his meeting with leaders in Europe, Glenn travelled to The Vatican visited with several high-ranking officials including Cardinals, Monsignors and Archbishops over the course of several days. They discussed the recent attacks on freedom of expression and freedom of conscience, as well as standing against the rise of secularism and the rise of anti-Semitism.

The news of the meetings with Catholic leaders comes on the heels of Glenn announcing a movement to protect religious freedom from government intrusion, currently best represented by “We are all Catholics now” – a call to action for people to stand up against mandated coverage of contraception by Catholic institutions. The movement, of course, is not about just contraception (or just Catholics), but rather the overall loss of religious freedom in America and the world.

Before heading home, Glenn also made a stop in Greece as part of research for a “special project” that will be revealed at a later date.

While the overseas meetings this weekend were very important, they were just the most recent discussions that Glenn has had with major religious and political leaders, both from American and the international stage.

Over the past two years, Glenn has been invited to meet with Billy Graham, Dr. James Dobson, Joel Olsteen, John Hagee, and James Robison. He has also met with many of the biggest names in the evangelical community, Chief Rabbis from four continents, high-ranking officials from the Eastern Orthodox Christian community, Coptic Christians from the Middle East, and many others.

Glenn has worked with many of these leaders to find ways for people of faith to stand together in support of religious freedom while remaining distinct and separate in their own theology. He has also spoken extensively on the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism and the attacks on faith from secularism.

“Because we have a right to worship freely, let us declare: We have a responsibility to fight for the rights of others to worship freely,” Glenn said in his keynote address at “Restoring Courage” in Jerusalem, Israel.

Over the past few years, Glenn has led a serious effort to unite people of faith together and to stand up for individual and religious freedom.

The movement began on 8.28 at The Restoring Honor Rally in Washington, D.C. when Glenn called for America to unite together and “turn back to God”. Many expected a politically charged speech targeting the federal government, but Glenn ended up telling the hundreds of thousands gathered in D.C. a very different message.

“This day is a day that we can start the heart of America again. And it has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to God. Everything turning our place back to the values and principles that made us great,” Glenn said on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Restoring Honor event concluded with Glenn being joined on stage by a “Black Robed Regiment”, a group of rabbis, preachers, imams, and other religious leaders all locked arm and arm. The gathering represented the call for unity that Glenn was making to people of faith across the country. Regardless of what you believe in, unite with other people who believe in God.

Not long after the Restoring Honor Rally in D.C., Glenn was already planning another event in Jerusalem, Israel, that would become “Restoring Courage”. Again, Glenn said people of faith needed to come together.

When announcing the event, Glenn encouraged people to stand up and declare their support of Israel and “do it as a globe and not just one country. Do it as people of faith.”

And at that event in Israel - at the crossroads of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – Glenn again called for people of faith to unite.

“Today I propose a new path. I propose a path led by you – the individual, linked in arms with other individuals. A path where governments and so-called human rights organizations get out of the way and people come together to solve our problems. As God intended,” he said.

Glenn pointed to history for examples of significant human rights movements, such as the end of Jim Crow laws in the American South, and how the hatred at the time was overcome not by a small, powerful elite but by individuals of faith.

“In each case, the work was done by individuals who would not abide convenient lies. They saw injustice and they called it out. They saw their nation wage war against a single group and they said ‘Not in My Name.’ They didn’t wait for the conventions of society to catch up to God’s laws. They pushed. They pressed. And they were victorious,” Glenn said.

“This spirit lives within us. I believe that you will link arms with others and stand with courage, and walk behind the pillar of fire,” he added.

The event ended with Glenn calling for a global movement of human rights and responsibility.

“America corrects its course through religious institutions,” Glenn told GlennBeck.com. “From the end of slavery to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. Our Judeo-Christian have always been at center of setting things right.”

On July 28th, Glenn will once again be calling for people of faith to unite together at “Restoring Love” in Dallas, Texas.

Counting cookies? Here are the CRAZIEST ways people predict the election.

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Every four years, America faces the same question: who will win the presidential election?

Top political scientists and media companies devise elaborate polls, complex formulas, and sophisticated projections to calculate who will win the election at any given moment. Even Stu has thrown his hat in the ring with Plusecast, a one-stop shop for all your polling questions. But these methods aren't the only ways to predict who will be the next commander-in-chief.

From cookies to football, here are some unorthodox ways to predict the next president:

The Cookie Poll

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Can cookies really predict the next president? According to Busken Bakery, they are more accurate than you might think.

Busken Bakery, has been using cookies to predict the winner of presidential elections since Regan beat Mondale in 1984, and has only been wrong once. Their method is simple: they sell cookies with the faces of both candidates and tally the sales of each. Whoever sells the most cookies is predicted to win. The simplicity of this method is its strength, and the only time it was wrong was the 2020 election. Currently, President Trump is far outstripping VP Harris, selling 23,477 cookies compared to her 8,781 cookies (as of 8/15). Busken posts daily updates on their Instagram, here.

Busken isn't the only bakery to make presidential predictions. Lochel's Bakery in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania has gained popularity recently. Lochel's has correctly predicted three of the last four elections by selling red and blue cookies printed with the names of the candidates. The current count for Lochel's is 28,212 for Trump and 2,097 for Harris. Again, Lochel's posts daily updates on their Instagram, here.

According to the cookies, this election is looking pretty sweet for President Trump!

Vegas Odds

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It's time to put your money where your mouth is.

It's not just political scientists who cook up election predictions. Casinos and sports betting services get in on the action. What could be a better way to predict an election than by asking people to put their hard-earned dollars on the line?

The big casinos and sports betting sites all have odds on the election, and Trump tends to be the favored candidate. If you are unfamiliar with betting odds in the U.S., the simple explanation of how they work is the smaller the number the better the odds. Here is the spread for three of the big betting sites:

bet365- Trump: -138, Harris: +110

BetMGM- Trump: -137, Harris: +110

Caesars- Trump: -145, Harris: +120

While you shouldn't take this as a sign to put all your money (or any) on President Trump, it is an optimistic sign!

The Redskins Rule

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The Redskins Rule is a well-documented correlation between the outcome of the presidential election and the performance of the Washington D.C. football team, the Redskins (now The Commanders). The rule is that if the Redskins win their last home game before the election, the incumbent party will win the election. If the Redskins lose, the challenging party will win the election. This rule is surprisingly accurate and held true for every election between 1940 and 2000.

If this rule is to be believed, the determining game is on Sunday, October 27th when the Redskins/Commanders play the Chicago Bears in Washington D.C. If the Bears win, that should mean Trump will win the election. If the Redskins win, then Harris will win.

But there is the fact that the rule has been broken several times since 2000. Has the charm worn off? And does it even count anymore if the team is no longer called the Redskins? Only time will tell!

Glenn joined Trump for an eventful weekend in the Southwest

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We are mere weeks away from the election, and President Trump has been making every day count.

This last weekend, Trump held two rallies back to back in the southwestern corner of our country—one just outside Coachella, California, and the other in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Glenn joined Trump in Arizona, along with thousands of other Americans, to support the former president in his final push towards election day. The polls still show a very tight race. Every vote matters, and with so much at stake, Trump has to finish strong.

Catch up with Trump and Glenn's busy weekend below:

Coachella

On Saturday the 12th, thousands of Donald Trump supporters flocked to Calhoun Ranch, an area not far from the famous Coachella fairgrounds, and braved the heat, drawn by Trump's promise to "Make America Great Again."

The headlining event of the rally was the alleged third assassination attempt on President Trump, although the Trump campaign doesn't see it that way. The action started when the alleged assassin, Vem Miller, was arrested while trying to enter the rally using allegedly fake press credentials and was charged with illegal possession of a handgun, a shotgun, and a high-capacity magazine. Miller has not admitted to an attempted assassination, and in fact, claims to have been a strong Trump supporter since 2018. Miller claims the firearms were purchased as a defensive measure after he received death threats linked to his work in the media. He also claims that the press credentials are not fake, and the mix-up was caused by the fact that he uses a different name on his press credentials as a safety precaution.

The Trump campaign, Secret Service, and FBI do not believe this was an assassination attempt, but in this heated political climate, one can never be too safe.

Prescott Valley

As soon as his rally in Cali was over, Trump hit the road to prepare for his next rally. On Sunday the 13th Trump held a rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona, where both Glenn and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake gave opening remarks.

In Glenn's short, yet powerful speech, he emphasized the importance of this election and highlighted all that was at stake— this is a battle of good and evil. He brought up the Left's attempt to erase women through transgender ideology and how that ideology encourages the predation of children. Glenn furthered the case of good versus evil by citing the Left's obsession with abortion. Glenn called abortion the sacrifice of a child's body for the convenience of the parents, a perversion of Christ's sacrifice of His body for us. Glenn called for God's Army to stand up and fight back against evil, using our voices and most importantly, our vote.

Glenn also lambasted Kamala for a recent interview where she admitted she wouldn't have changed anything if she had a chance to do her term as VP over again. He laid into her for marketing herself as an agent of change, while simultaneously defending the status quo. Glenn pointed out that if anyone wants to change the country for the better, Trump is the man to do it: Trump is the candidate for change, not Kamala.

Glenn: What I saw on the ground in Asheville gave me hope

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The government can’t save us. Washington is too slow and too bureaucratic, and quite frankly, the government doesn’t care.

I’ve seen a lot of destruction in my life. I’ve walked through war zones and cities torn apart by riots, and I've stood at the sites of natural disasters that leave communities devastated. But what I saw in Asheville, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene was unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed.

Houses were washed down rivers, upside down and crushed. Train tracks, strong enough to support locomotives, were left suspended in midair after the earth beneath them was eroded away. Semi-trucks, rolled by the force of the floodwaters, now lie like children’s toys, tossed and overturned hundreds of feet from the road. Whole towns have been uprooted and scattered — debris from homes miles away, stacking up like dominoes, bridges that stood for decades washed out by water so high that it flowed six feet over their tops.

'You tell everybody you know — even if they don’t care — we’ll take care of our own damn selves if nobody shows up.'

I stood there, looking at this idyllic small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I thought, “This will take years to rebuild. Maybe even decades.” But I didn’t just see destruction. I saw something far more powerful than nature’s wrath: the resilience of the American spirit.

My expectations for the government’s assistance were low before I arrived in Asheville, given its failing track record in previous natural disasters, but its response to Hurricane Helene victims — or lack thereof — was a new category of negligence. But the people in Asheville weren’t waiting on FEMA or the federal government to swoop in. They knew no one was coming.

The bridges were out, roads were destroyed, and the mountains had isolated them from outside help. But instead of despair, I saw hope. Instead of panic, I saw action. People were taking care of each other, and that is the America I remember, like in the days after 9/11 when we came together regardless of political party, race, or background. We didn’t care about who voted for whom. We just saw our neighbors hurting, and we asked, “Are you OK? What can I do to help?”

I saw that again in North Carolina. I saw it in the man who turned his Harley-Davidson dealership into a helicopter landing zone, shoveling mud out of his showroom just so rescue teams could land. I saw it in the volunteers flying missions across treacherous terrain, getting the elderly and the injured out of danger. They weren’t asking for government permission. They were doing what needed to be done.

Adam Smith, a retired Special Forces veteran who is coordinating the landing of helicopters in Asheville, told me that the FAA is trying to shut down the operation because it isn’t federally regulated. He told the feds that they’re going to leave because he has a helicopter landing in a few minutes that will actually help people while they are barking orders from Washington.

One story stood out to me. We landed to help evacuate an elderly woman with a broken hip and a severe infection. She just had surgery, but because her family didn’t have insurance, the hospital pushed her out as fast as it could. Her wound became infected, and her leg was on fire. We helped airlift her to get her desperately needed antibiotics and treatment. There were no government resources to help her to an emergency room.

As we loaded the woman into the helicopter, her grandson turned to me and said, “You tell everybody you know — even if they don’t care — we’ll take care of our own damn selves if nobody shows up.” That hit me hard because it’s the truth. It’s the way America used to be, and it’s the way we need to be again.

As I flew through those mountains in the helicopter, I couldn’t help but think of Billy Graham. I’d visited Asheville about 10 years ago to see him, and I remember thinking how beautiful and peaceful the town was. Today, it’s unrecognizable. The destruction is overwhelming. But the people are stronger than ever.

The government can’t save us. Washington is too slow and too bureaucratic, and quite frankly, the government doesn’t care. I saw it firsthand. We found a FEMA truck parked under a tree, its workers sitting at a card table in the shade. They weren’t doing anything to help.

But we’re Americans. We can take care of ourselves. We don’t need Washington to save us. We need each other. This is the America that Billy Graham spoke to me about — the America that will rise again in times of trouble. And while the government might fail us, we will not fail each other. And that’s exactly what I saw in North Carolina — Americans stepping up, taking care of their neighbors, and rebuilding their communities.

This is what I told the people of Asheville: You are not forgotten. There are millions of Americans who love you, who are praying for you, and who are ready to help. Because that’s what we do. We don’t wait for permission. We roll up our sleeves and take care of our own.

And to the rest of America, I say this: It’s time to remember who we are. It’s time to stop looking to Washington for solutions and start looking at each other. Because when the chips are down, it’s not the government that’s going to save us. It’s you and me, and if we stand together, nothing — no hurricane, no flood, no disaster — can break us.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

UPDATE: Will Florida survive Hurricane Milton?

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For the second time in two weeks, Florida is in the path of a major hurricane.

Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall sometime tonight, Wednesday, October 9th, somewhere near Tampa Bay. This will mark the first time in a hundred years the city has been hit directly by a hurricane, raising concerns about the preparedness of the city's infrastructure. Milton, which was rated a category five hurricane earlier this week, has been reduced to a category four as it approaches land and is expected to make landfall as a powerful category three.

The Sunshine State has already begun to feel the effects of the historic storm, with strong winds and heavy rains battering Tampa Bay this morning. Many are still trying to evacuate or prepare for the storm as conditions worsen. Highways have slowed down, and gas has run short. Residents are preparing for the worst.

The federally recognized "Waffle House Index" is in red, meaning that several Waffle House locations in the Tampa Bay area will be shut down. Waffle House prides itself on being open 24/7, no matter the conditions, so for them to shut down, if only for a brief time, indicates that severe damage to the area is anticipated.