You can't have maximum freedom without maximum responsibility. Glenn explained why the two go hand-in-hand during tonight's opening monologue on The Glenn Beck Program.

Updated 3/27:

Well, tonight I want to talk about two things, freedom and responsibility, freedom and responsibility.  Today on the radio program, somebody asked me, it might have been Pat, said, Well, what’s your plan?  What do you mean my plan?  My plan was eight years ago.  I said, don’t let this stuff happen.  Nobody would listen.  And I said we were going to start passing all of the exits, and it going to get worse and worse and worse, which would mean you would have to make a more desperate plan.  You’d have to get more and more radical.  This isn’t anything new.  You run out of options.

I mean, you have cancer, right?  If you catch your cancerous growth early, you have lots of options.  You could have radiation, you can go in and surgically remove it without much damage, but if you let it grow and metastasize, then I mean you’ve got to cut your leg off, you know, take your whole jaw off, more and more invasive procedures, radical surgery, and those will be the only things left to prevent death.

Well, we have passed the point of easy cures, and we are now reaching this stage of this cancer metastasizing in the body of the republic, which will mean the end of the republic as we know it and maybe the end of the Western way of life as we know it.  And there are no easy answers left.

And I don’t know if you feel this, but the world has gotten much more serious.  I don’t know if you feel the same way that I do that we’ve known there were problems, but I think even those who have strongly disagreed with me in the past about what they mean are starting to say wait a minute, wait a minute.

Now, there are no easy answers, but there are simple answers.  And they are good answers, but we have got to start taking these steps.  We have to do it.  We have to do it right now.  Rand Paul, Mike Lee, some of the guys you’re seeing in Congress, they have the solution.  It is freedom and responsibility, maximum freedom and maximum personal responsibility.  This is really, really easy, because freedom really is action.  You have the freedom to act.

You have the freedom to light a fuse.  You have a freedom to eat too much cake.  You have the freedom to make bad loans if you’re working at a bank; however, you have to then take the responsibility, because with every action is a reaction.  That’s the responsibility part.

You have the freedom to light a fuse, man, but you have now the personal responsibility of the bomb that explodes.  You have the freedom to eat too much cake, but that means you have the responsibility to live with the reaction of getting sick or looking like tubby.  You can make bad loans, but you go out of business, and it’s not my fault. 

If you make a bad loan, you go out of business, but see what we’ve done is we have erased all of this, and we’ve said there is no reaction to the action.  That’s the problem.  So what does freedom look like when there is no responsibility?  Well, it looks like Greece.  You can have everything.  You can have unlimited vacation.  You have to work hard.  You don’t even have to show up.  We’ll pay you.  We’ll let you retire when you’re 51 years old.

It looks like Greece.  It looks like Egypt.  It looks like Cyprus, and it also looks exactly like what the global left has been orchestrating for years all around the globe, remolding the world nearer to its heart’s desire.  And you heat it up, and you heat it up with the natural reaction, because there is a natural reaction.  There is responsibility, and because the responsibility has been scapegoated and put on to some other, somebody else’s shoulders because it allows you to continue to believe you’re living free, it ends in total control, because it ends in civil unrest because you’re pissed off.  You’ve been told you’re free and you can light the fuse, eat too much cake, and make bad loans, and live in houses that we can’t afford, and everything’s going to be fine.  Whose problem is it?  I did my part of the bargain.  Where did it go wrong?

It went wrong because you were lied to.  There is reaction to these things.  And so, the last piece doesn’t become responsibility, it becomes blame.  I did these things, and now it’s bad.  Who do I blame?  Well, you, and it will come back to you, because it’s freedom to blame.  People have too much freedom.  They should have known not to light the fuse.

Cyprus and other European countries are now burdened with taking responsibility for the poor choices of their people, their government, their banks.  They bought into the lies, just as we’re faced with the consequences of shoddy behavior of ourselves and our banks in 2008.

Just before the financial crash, we all had the freedom to say, That doesn’t make sense.  You’re going to give me what kind of a loan?  And the banks had the freedom to make the deal they wanted, but when they collapsed, and when we collapse, you now have to take the responsibility.  But instead of taking the brunt of the consequences, we look for someone to blame.  Well, that’s not freedom.  That’s Cyprus.

When you’re being forced to give up 30 or even 40% of your assets, you look for somebody else to blame.  Make them pay it.  I’m not going to pay it.  You see, what they’re saying down at the bottom is you told me I could do these things without any reaction.  Well, I played by the rules.  That’s what they’re saying.  I played by the rules.  I lit the fuse, I ate cake, and I made bad loans.  You told me I could. 

Well, soon what has already happened elsewhere globally will happen here with ObamaCare – can we turn this around, Eileen – when we are forced to pay for the lifestyle of others – the other way, Eileen.  Oh, there it is, yep – when we are forced to pay for the lifestyle of others.  We are going to – this is what’s happening.  When people know they can get away with, you know, anything, somebody else has to pay for it.

For instance, Jack.  Jack works hard.  Jack lives a clean life, he helps others, and he plays by the rules.  He’s over here building a place for the, you know, so he can have the well and the bucket, and they can all fall down the hill and break his crown.  Okay, great, he’s working hard, but Jill, she doesn’t work.  She doesn’t work.  She lives off Jack.  She smokes, she drinks, and she has too many kids, and they’re protesting: we’re the 99.

Well, when Jack has to pay for Jill, the first thing he’s going to do is say, Wait a minute, wait a minute, that’s not fair.  That’s not fair.  Why am I paying for Jill?  What is she doing?  Well, you know, she’s – okay, alright, well, if I have to pay for her, the first thing, she can’t smoke.  She can’t drink.  We have to make sure she doesn’t have any more kids.  That sounds like Bloomberg, and that’s exactly why Bloomberg is doing it, because somebody has to pay for her having a heart attack, from her cancer treatment, from her alcoholism.  They have the pay for rehab, and it’s Jack, and Jack is pissed.

You know what this is?  You’ve heard this before.  This is not freedom.  This is, as long as you live under my roof, you will follow my rules.  That’s what it is.  That’s why Jack and Jill moved out of their house at 18, we wanted freedom.  We wanted to chart our own course.  We didn’t want to live playing by our parents’ rules.  That’s natural.  That’s good, but with that freedom comes responsibility.  But now, strangely so many Americans want to crawl back under that roof, whether that’s Obama’s roof or Bloomberg’s roof or the faceless, nameless IMF.

Take Egypt.  We’re seeing what happens further down the road.  When you separate freedom with responsibility, if you take ’em and split ’em apart for too long, well then violence and unrest, and it’s just the beginning here.  This is just the beginning of it, but conveniently, there’s somebody else.  There’s somebody else.

You see, when Jack is really pissed off and he can’t take it anymore, and there’s a whole bunch of Jills, then you have to have somebody up here.  It used to be God, but now it’s the government, and the government will say Jack, don’t worry about it.  We’ll protect you.  We’re going to have roughly, according to the FAA, roughly 10,000 active drones in five years over the skies of American cities.  That’s great.

Universal principle:  freedom cannot exist without responsibility.  There cannot be action without reaction.  Those who want to control every aspect of your life, they will tell you that there is no reaction to your action, and they will bring you in in seductive ways.  Oh, your life is going to be so much easier.  You’re going to have more stuff.  You’re going to have more time.  You’re not going to have worries.  All of our children are going to be safe.  There’s no boo-boos.  Nobody will ever fall down.  We’re all going to be smart and strong, and they will entice you by thinking that you can have the good part, the action, without ever having the reaction.  You’ll never have to face the things that are not appealing. 

But the relationship between the two are as inseparable as lighting the fuse on a rocket and that rocket lifting off.  When you separate them, when you try to convince people that those don’t, are not related, it always ends badly.  And it always ends in somebody forcing you, because at some point you’ll go, that rocket, I push this button, and every time I push that button, a rocket like that goes off.  And pretty soon you’re like, This makes that work.  Hmm.  So somebody has to get stronger and start lying to you and convincing you and running propaganda saying, That button has nothing to do with it.

If you only have freedom without any responsibility or vice versa, one person like Jack will always be burdened with all of the responsibilities resulting from another person’s actions.  This is something that Hayek wrote about in his book Road to Serfdom.  He wrote, “Freedom to order our own conduct…is in the air, but the “responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience…and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”  You have to bear the consequence, point of the book, Road to Serfdom.

And when you have serfs, the Lords of the Manor never have to worry about the consequences because they’re so far apart from the serfs, and what do they care about the serfs?  Oh, well, soon you’ll care because the serfs will rise up, and then there will be a struggle for power.  Well, that’s exactly what we’re seeing today.  How it ends really depends on you.

Today, the left loves to talk about freedom, but boy they hate talking about responsibility.  Free birth control – well, how about no sex?  Are you crazy?  What kind of a hatemonger are you?  Free drugs – well, how about not doing drugs?  What?  That doesn’t work, just say no to drugs.  Free food – how about working?  Oh, you hatemonger.  Free education – how about higher scores?  The freedom to provide loans for people with no credit, no credit whatsoever.  You don’t even have to show an I.D.

And they avoid the cause and effect of their actions, and when faced with the natural consequences, they don’t want any of it.  See, that’s the point.  This is natural.  This – can you turn the chalkboard again for me, back to where it was – that’s totally natural, action and reaction.  It’s the natural physics of the world.

We take the stance of supporting as little government as possible on this program.  We take that stance because there are causes and effects of nature.  It’s called “natural law.”  You’re out on a mountain in the winter, you’re going to freeze to death – natural law.  And when people recognize natural law, you don’t need manufactured laws enforcing them, because they understand, I’m up on the mountain and I should have a jacket on because I’m going to get cold and freeze to death.  They figure it out because they know how nature works, and they become stronger.

You don’t need laws that regulate.  You don’t need a law that says on a sign up at the top of a mountain summit, must have jacket.  I would put a sign right next to it go, must be moron if you don’t know that.  The banks should know that they’ll lose all of their money if they give out risky loans.  They’ll go out of business.  We don’t need laws that regulate what drugs you consume, because the consequences of those drugs if they are put on your shoulders become too much to bear.

When you remove the natural consequence, artificial laws have to be imposed, and that is when increasing government control begins.  There are some people like Michael Bloomberg who understand this and actually encourage this pattern because they’re trying to shake off the current Lord of the Manor so they can occupy the manor.

And what they want to do is build this up to a breaking point, and when that happens, society sees unrest.  And then the new manor, the new Lord of the Manor comes in, usually a strongman, and he says I’m going to alleviate everyone from their consequences of their behavior.  Well, he can’t, because it’s a natural law, and so to do that, he must stop the action, meaning, Alright, well, the first thing you’re going to do is you’re not going to light any more fuses,  and you can’t have any more cake, and you won’t make any bad loans.  I’ll do all of them for you.  That way we have no problems over here.

That’s it.  That is as simple as it gets.  The responsibility goes to the strongman.  Your freedom goes to the strongman, because you don’t want to take responsibility, so he will.  And if you don’t like it, if you don’t like what he says over here, the actions he stops you from taking, well then he has the responsibility to get rid of you, to shut you up.

That is how you enslave a people, you give one group privilege.  You give them the privilege of making the decisions and taking the actions, and then you pay for the responsibility.  You are the ones who have to pay the price.  One group does nothing but work for the earnings, while the other group controls them and enjoys the freedom to use those earnings freely.  It’s top-down redistribution.

People get mad when this happens, and then civil unrest erupts, bottom up, and it’s the Jack and Jill thing.  Imagine you’re Jack, and you’ve played by the rules your entire life.  And then you realize the whole time, Wait a minute, I’ve been working here, and the whole time I’ve been saving.  And now it doesn’t matter, because they just took it from my bank account.  And I’ve been playing and working hard, and they’ve been having a good time.  What the hell am I doing?  At some point, you think, I’m a sucker.  When people feel like they’ve been made a sucker, then they rise up.

This is the same injustice felt by the Tea Party and the 9/12 Project.  When all the banks and the auto companies were bailed out, and taxes started to go up, we rose up, not because it was unjust per se, but because we knew it would become unjust.  We knew we were on the road to serfdom, and we knew it was breaking the natural law.  Nature’s God put together nature’s laws – action-reaction.  We knew when you bail out the banks, we knew what was coming.

And as we explained yesterday, evil disguises itself as good and tries to win by seducing people using the logic that got us here in the first place – freedom without responsibility.  Relax, it doesn’t matter.  And when that doesn’t work anymore, when you’re like red button makes rocket go off, that’s when they have to go in and step in and say, Pay no attention to those people.  They’re crazy.  Rocket goes off when you push that button – no, no.  And that’s what they did to the Tea Party.

The Tea Party was made to be angry, vicious people.  Look at them.  Look at them.  They were angry, but that’s not why they gathered.  They gathered because they were standing for individual freedom and individual responsibility that comes with that freedom.  We were upset because our freedoms were being taken away by taking away reaction to action.  We knew we would be burdened with the responsibilities.  We knew the government would blame it on somebody, and it wasn’t going to be them.

Now, there’s another one that is confused with the Tea Party all the time, but they’re totally different.  It’s Occupy Wall Street.  They came, and they came with the same rage.  They came with the same feeling of Hey, this system doesn’t work, but they didn’t ever harness it with a sense of responsibility and morality, action-reaction, freedom-responsibility.  They didn’t have the responsibility.  That’s why the Tea Party left everything clean when they left, and it was left like a sewer from Occupy Wall Street.

When you unpeg freedom and responsibility, it becomes dangerous and violent and out of control.  Today the Cypriots are following the same lead.  They’re following Occupy Wall Street by occupying the banks, but what are you going to do now?  What are you going to do?  You’re in the wrong place.  The robbers are already gone.  It’s not the bank anymore.  It’s the IMF.

We’re going down the road of the French Revolution.  It was an out-of-control mob that began terrorizing the cities, drowning babies in the barricades, and this is what happens when you take away God, morals, and responsibility, when you take those things out of the equation.

It’s exactly the same story that happened in the 1960s.  Look at the radical hippies.  They got high, they had free sex, and well, let’s stop the war.  Well, they stopped it, alright.  And that’s when the Khmer Rouge killed 3 million people, because there is a reaction to the action.  They stopped the war, left a vacuum, and 3 million people lost their lives, but the hippies never took responsibility for that.  They refuse to even look at it.

The ones who took responsibility, as it always is with big government people, with hippies, with Occupy Wall Street, with Communist, Marxist, it’s always the same thing.  Tea Party people will always say, Well, I take responsibility for that.  I made the mistake, but the other side, once you remove that responsibility, they don’t take it.  So who is it?  The people who take responsibility were the Cambodians.  They were the ones that bore the responsibility.  The reaction went against them.  They were killed.

It’s the same story for Conservatives now in America.  The radicals want to spend money, live like animals, and then hand off the consequence to people who don’t live like animals and spend money like water.  It would be like every time your friend goes out partying, he gives you his hangover.  Hey man, I’ve got such a headache.  Here, you take it.  I’ve got to go to another party.  Despite the fact that you chose to stay home, you chose to work, you’re stuck with his hangover, and you say like, Oh man, can you stop, please?  Stop.  And he doesn’t listen, so then you demand it.

What’s going to happen here?  If he keeps giving you his hangover, and he keeps going out and partying, he’s either going to die, or you eventually lock his keys up, and you say, You’re not leaving, man.  If I have to have the hangover, you’re not leaving.  But then what does he do?  He turns to you like, Whoa, dude.  I just want my freedom to go party.  You’re a Fascist.  Well, in a way, I guess I am.  I’m more of your parent.  If I have to pay for your decisions to use drugs, then you can’t use drugs.  So you’re a parent, unless you’re not the one making the decision, unless you’re just the one footing the bill.

It’s like a parent, that would be the government, a parent making all the decisions, and then the child who behaves and looks at the parent and is like, What are you doing?  That’s crazy.  I’m going to work.  I’m going to do my job Taco Bell.  And every time you come home, you get the hangover, and the parent takes your money.  And you’re like, Wait, stop.  What are you doing?  My sibling is out of control, and so is my parent.

That’s what’s happening now.  You’re a parent if you say, Look, you live under my house, you live by my rules, but you’re not the one even making the rules now.  You’re the one trying to stop the parent from making those rules.  You’re saying they don’t work.  Those rules don’t work because you’re paying for them, neither the parent nor the sibling, you are.  How are you involved in this at all?

That’s why you have to get rid of blame.  This is why I believe Lincoln said “with malice toward none.”  You have to get rid of blame, and you have to put back responsibility and reaction, have to.  Gotta put ‘em back.  Gotta go back to maximum freedom, maximum individual responsibility.  Then we can talk about a true libertarian society.  It’s just that easy.  That’s the solution.