Glenn is in Los Angeles, California this week working on what he described as “some really great things.” And on radio this morning, Glenn discussed a memo he sent out to some of the writers, editors, and executives at TheBlaze late last night that offered some context for the positions he has taken on certain issues lately and the path he believes will inform the company and, ultimately, the country in the near future.
“I am a guy who apparently a lot of people disagree with, and that's fine,” Glenn said. “Last night, I saw a story. Somebody sent me a story from Alex Jones, and I wrote a long memo to everybody in my company… I'm not going to respond to Alex Jones anymore. Not because I hate him or anything else, but because Alex Jones has his path… and he has a right to say those things.”
Glenn went on to explain that he spent much of last night reflecting on and praying about what the correct path forward is. While his immediate reaction to want to “punch back with the facts,” he knows that is not the answer.
“Last night, I really prayed hard. What do I do, Lord? How do I do this? Because my instinct is to punch back with the facts, and I know that's wrong,” Glenn said. “The reason why I wrote this memo last night is I don't want any more division. I don't want any more hatred… I have been saying to Pat – and say it as a really flawed individual – we have to love our enemies.”
In the aftermath of the standoff in Nevada between the federal Bureau of Land Management and Cliven Bundy, Glenn understands his audience and the American people’s frustration with the federal government. But we come to a place in which there is a serious decision to be made.
“I have watched my country being poisoned and strangled to death every day, and I have been trying to ring the bell and cry out for help, help, help,” Glenn said. “Now we come to this place to where there's a decision. We are either going to bring our guns and bring our anger and our rage, and we are going to call people names. Or we are going to go the way of Martin Luther King and Gandhi.”
Last night, Glenn picked up some of the old speeches and writings of King and Gandhi in hopes of better understanding how they led such effective and peaceful movements in the midst of discontent.
Glenn came across an interview Malcolm X gave in which he smeared King and his mission:
MALCOLM X: The white man pays Reverend Martin Luther King, subsidizes Reverend Martin Luther King, so that Reverend Martin Luther King can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless. That's what you mean by non-violent: be defenseless. Be defenseless in the face of one of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken a people into captivity. That's this American white man. And they have proved it throughout the country by the police dogs and the police clubs.
A hundred years ago they used to put on a white sheet and use a bloodhound against Negroes. Today they've taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms, they've traded in the bloodhounds for police dogs, and they're still doing the same thing. And just as Uncle Tom, back during slavery, used to keep the Negroes from resisting the bloodhound, or resisting the Ku Klux Klan, by teaching them to love their enemy, or pray for those who use them spitefully, today Martin Luther King is just a 20th century or modern Uncle Tom, or a religious Uncle Tom, who is doing the same thing today, to keep Negroes defenseless in the face of an attack, that Uncle Tom did on the plantation to keep those Negroes defenseless in the face of the attacks of the Klan in that day.
“As I read those words last night, I thought: History is repeating itself," Glenn said. "How did Martin Luther King respond? In a way that came natural to him, and I must learn.”
King responded to Malcolm X’s claims with the following:
I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute.
He is very articulate, but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views-at least insofar as I understand where he now stands. 1 don't want to sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answers. I know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And, in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, 1 feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.
In the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the Negro would face the same unchanged conditions, the same squalor and deprivation-the only difference being that his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more abject. Thus, in purely practical as well as moral terms, the American Negro has no rational alternative to nonviolence.
When they threw eggs at me in New York, I think that was really a result of the Black Nationalist groups. They had heard all of these things about my being soft, my talking about love, and they transferred that bitterness toward the white man to me. They began to feel that I was saying to love this person that they had such a bitter attitude toward. In fact, Malcolm X had a meeting the day before, and he talked about me a great deal and told them that I would be there the next night and said, "You ought to go over there and let old King know what you think about him." And he had said a great deal about nonviolence, criticizing nonviolence, and saying that I approved of Negro men and women being bitten by dogs and the firehoses. So I think this kind of response grew out of all of the talk about my being a sort of polished Uncle Tom.
“I am telling you the same thing. Are you more angry and bitter today than you were two years ago? If your answer is yes, you're on the wrong path,” Glenn concluded. “I am a flawed guy. I am not talking about sitting down and taking it. I am talking about standing, linked arm in arm, and if the entire world goes the other way, that is fine. I will stand. I will resist when the cause is just, but I will do so without violence, and that's not enough. I will do so without anger in my heart. That's the real key. With charity for all, and malice toward none.”
