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Glenn: Individuals can change the world

May 23, 2014
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The Glenn Beck Program

On radio this morning, Glenn reflected on some of the news stories of the day that are shaming private businesses into making certain decisions. As Glenn explained, private businesses have the right to make decisions and operate as they see fit, and he proceeded to dive into a monologue that considered the ever-changing role of gatekeepers and the power of the individual to overcome those barriers to entry.

Below is an edited transcript of the monologue:

There’s a story about Amazon. Amazon is getting pushback because they're in dispute with some publisher – and I don't know what even the dispute is about – but they don't want to sell these books made by this publisher. So people are standing up and saying, ‘Amazon can't silence my book.’ Yes, they can. They're a private company. Yes, they can.

This is where freedom of speech and freedom gets ugly. Yes, they can. I don't have a problem with it unless it's a regulated industry. In other words, if the government said, ‘No one else can sell books online except… Amazon.com and iBooks… And if you want to, you got to come through us.’ Well, then you have a problem because then a publisher cannot get his book out. But if all the private companies, in an unregulated situation, decide, ‘I don't want to do it,’ then nobody is there to force them to do it. You can't force people to do it, if it's all purely private.

[…]

They're making the case that Amazon is crushing voices. No, Amazon has the right to do that as long as it's not a government regulated industry. And government regulation is the problem. If I can start selling books myself online, I may not be able to compete and make it as good as Amazon right at the very beginning. It's like WalMart. WalMart started out with a guy's truck, man.

For some reason, this Disney prospectus is going around. There's like the second story I've read and the Huffington Post has a story about the prospectus of Disneyland that I have, and they're showing pictures of it on the Huffington Post today. I don't know why. But the most amazing thing about that is in 1953, he was told no by the banks. But there was no government regulation. Think of the restrictions of this. October of 1953, he's turned down. He needs $17 million. He's turned down by all of the banks. By the end of 1953, beginning of 1954, he has financing. So he gives it the green light in the beginning of 1954. Summer of 1955, he has purchased the orange field in California, cleared all of the land, built all of the infrastructure, designed and built all of the rides, all of the merchants, done all of the publicity for it, and opens the gates in 18 months. There's no way you get even the ground study in 18 months [today]. That's when a man was free.

Now, let me ask you this. I'm using Walt Disney because I relate to him. I thought about this the other day. Imagine America, what would we be like if Walt Disney never lived? What would America be like if Walt Disney never lived? How much history would have been lost? How much joy would have been lost? How much would we not believe in the entrepreneur in a one man can make a difference? Think of that. Walt Disney, he was not the smartest guy in the room. He had sheer willpower. The same thing with Steve Jobs. It was sheer willpower. Pixar did not want Steve Jobs… In the end, they had to take the offer from Steve Jobs. But everything he did was sheer willpower. ‘No, guys, we're doing it. Let's go. We're doing it.’

Can a man still do that? We're building this network. Yes, you can build a television network. You can build a successful television network, successful book publishing company. You can build a successful new charity. You can even make your own jeans and sell them and make that a success. Yes, you can do all of those things. Now, can you get the mass distribution? I can't build a mass distribution platform anymore. You cannot build Comcast. You have to go through the government. So I can only build so much. And then the gatekeepers start. That's what we came away from. That's what we wanted to escape – the gatekeepers. And that's what they're putting everywhere. Sure, you can educate yourself. Go ahead. Do your home-schooling thing. Of course, if you do that, you have to take the SAT, and you won't make it to college. But go ahead. You can do that. They will only allow you to get so much. And the rest of it, if you want the real prize, you play ball.

Look at this with political parties. You really think you can get elected? I did. I used to believe that a man could just go be who he is and then become the president of the United States. I don't believe that anymore. You can only go so far, and then the uber powerful along with their parties and their machinery step in.

Now, I hope we find that to be incorrect. I didn't believe in gatekeepers three years ago. I believe they believed they existed. I just believed you could get around them. I'm still looking for the way around them. I do believe there's a back door somewhere. We're going to short-circuit this system somehow or another. It's going to work. But because of the sheer willpower that it takes, how many Disneys are we missing? How many people have given up in our society because they believe the lie: You can't make it? How many Steve Jobs? How many teachers? How many great conservative thinkers? How many great actors that are conservative that just didn't make it? Couldn't make it. Stacked against them. How many great writers?

When we first started writing books, Rush Limbaugh was an anomaly. That's what they told us. What Rush Limbaugh did is an anomaly? Excuse me? He sold like 650 million books. What are you talking about? ‘Well, that's Rush Limbaugh.’ Yeah, he's not the only one who makes us good points, you know. ‘Yeah, well, Conservatives don't read.’ How many great conservative minds, how many great conservative professors have been lost because they've been ground up into little bits. Some have been humiliated. Quite honestly, how many of them became just raging alcoholics because their spirits were crushed?

We have the opportunity to be so much better than we are. There is a new day coming, a new dawn coming. There really is. I was listening to Pandora yesterday, and I'm hearing this group. And I'm like, ‘Wow, I like that song.’ I hear another group I had never heard. ‘Man, I like that, too.’ I'm a radio guy. I'm a broadcaster. I remember when the record companies used to come into the hallway and wait to meet with people like me. I remember being 18 and seeing the record producers come and wait in the hallway and beg the program director of WPGC in Washington, D.C., ‘Just give this song a chance.’ The graft that used to happen, the games that used to happen… that's the way the system worked. It was corrupt. Now, you can record something on your phone that is good enough and could be heard anywhere. Millennials don't. Baby boomers do. Really? Where is the individual in that?

I believe in the power of the individual. I believe there is a millennial living in America now who will change our world for the better. There is a millennial that is living in America right now that will change the landscape of technology. There is a millennial in America right now that will change the landscape of politics in America for the better. There is a millennial living in another country who will move to the United States and change the way we communicate with each other through a form of communication that we don't even understand yet. We don't even know of. There's a millennial living somewhere who will see America as a faded shining city on a hill and find the way to make it shine again because I believe one person changes the world.

Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and, yes, Stalin and Hitler and Bin Laden – the struggle of good versus evil. It's the struggle of one individual, and their one struggle between good and evil that changes things. I choose to focus on the good, to believe in the good, to pray for the good, to expect the good, to demand the good because… I'm still lucky enough to believe that the vast majority of people are good. They're courageous. They're tireless. They're decent. They're loving. They fear God.

It's not the collective. Enough with the collective stereotypes. Believe in the individual. Which means if you do believe, like I do, it's up to you to be good. It's up to you to be decent. It is up to you to be loving. And then look for the ripples. It is the ripples that will save the world. Today, make some. Make just one ripple.”

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.