Tonight on GBTV, Glenn revisited a story that has grown from YouTube video on TheBlaze to a viral news story that has been picked up by most national networks. But while many in the mainstream media are focusing on the victim, bus monitor Karen Klein, Glenn wanted to focus on the children and the culture that has led to them being full of bile and hatred towards another human being.
In the video, the children verbally abuse Klein, mocking her weight, her clothing, and her income. They even threaten to stab here. It's a horrifying video, and Glenn was disgusted that something like that could happen. But he saw it as symptomatic of a larger issue - we as a country no longer care or empathize with others. While it's easy to write this off as just a bunch of teenagers being particularly, Glenn said that if this is happening across the country it's still "not OK". He said that it reflects a decline in values, and writing this off as normal behavior that is being exposed simply because we now have YouTube doesn't justify the behavior.
Furthermore, Glenn discussed several news stories that show that this kind of disconnect from people isn't confined to just kids. Take, for example, someone who wrote into Time Magazine: "Besides, this health-care debate isn't about those over 30; it's about the millions of uninsured, recently graduated young people saddled with loans we can't imagine paying off, who are sick and tired of living in an abyss created by our elders' stupidity. Obama would be smart to focus on college towns. Step aside, Grandma. We want health care, and we want it now."
Or the former Obama advisor Robert Reich who said, "We are going to have to, if you are very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you, maybe, going for another couple of months. It's too expensive. So, we're going to let you die."
Are we at risk of just focusing on ourselves and ignoring and abusing those who cannot help themselves?
"The seeds have been planted. We're already going down this road," Glenn said.
Glenn said we need to start asking ourselves the hard questions, such as the below:
1) What can we do differently?
2) What's the punishment?
3) Where are the parents?
4) How many of us have kids like this and have no clue?
"One of our biggest problems today is that parents have abdicated their responsibilities," Glenn said. "While we're out working and trying to have it all - fancy houses, cars, boats, vacations - we're handing off our parenting duties to someone else: teachers and schools. To peers. To babysitters/daycare. To TV."
"That's not to say you can't have two working parents and have good kids. You can. You just have to be engaged. And too many are not. And we live in a culture that mocks homeschooling and being a stay at home mom."
"Kids are being taught that they are their ultimate authority. Not their parents. And certainly not that imaginary friend in the sky. And there's no shame in anything you do. It's just your choice."
But what do you do?
Glenn asked viewers to look to the story of Abraham Lincoln. His mother died young and his dad was abusive. It wasn't until his step-mother taught him to read that things started to turn around, but even then he faced hardship including the death of several of his children and grandchildren. And he lost many battles in war - all causing in faith to flounder.
But in his second inaugural address he made a covenant with God and recognized that you must surrender yourself to Him.
He said: Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
"That's the message," Glenn said. "We may lose our wealth, houses, jobs - I don't know what that price is - only He does. Every day we add more hatred, more anger, more rage, more kids bullying bus monitors, idol worship- the more days we do this, the higher the price the higher the cost."
Glenn said we need humbleness, kindness, and, of course, we need to teach love.