Blog
LatestArticlesVideos
Radio
LivePodcastSerialsStations
TV
Podcasts
The Glenn Beck ProgramThe Glenn Beck PodcastThe Beck Story
Fine Art
Real Estate
Shop
More
AboutCharityBooksSponsorsContact
SEARCH
Live Radio

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Collateral Fourth Amendment damage

July 07, 2014
Wilson

Writer

The consistent excuse from Congress to continue the NSA’s mass data collection is to say they never target anyone other than terrorists. Turns out that’s not exactly the case. In fact, some 90% of the individuals targeted weren’t real targets, as Buck Sexton referred to them on radio today they are more aptly described as collateral Fourth Amendment damage.

WATCH:

Below is a rough transcript of this segment:

BUCK: First, what really caught my eye, because I was doing my read, preparing for what I call as my session in the freedom hunt, there have been new revelations about the N.S.A., Edward Snowden, the contractor turned, oh, people call him a whistle-blower. I think we're going to have to start thinking of other terms. Whistle-blower is a much abused term now. In fact, when you look at the Obama Administration's record on whistle-blowers, a lot of the time the people whose names are bandied about by members of the press are with no normal understanding of the term to be called whistle-blowers.

Someone want to explain to me what Bradley, aka Chelsey, Manning, what whistle was being blown exactly, that a war is being fought, that diplomacy is a dirty business, that there are countries all over the world that are very corrupt. We still try to work with them. I'm not really sure how that is blowing a whistle. That would be perhaps blowing state secrets, but not a whistle per se.

There are other instances as well when are people get lumped in, whistle-blower. To be a whistle-blower you have to be identifying wrongdoing and that does not apply to some of the things that we're talking about here with the N.S.A.

However, in this particular instance, because there there have been many instances, because if you believe what we're told publicly by the intelligence community at this point in time, what Snowden took with him was massive, a trove of data. And the latest according to "The Washington Post" as we see here is ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in a communication sept intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by "The Washington Post."

You see, the Post now has all of these documents in its possession and it takes it upon itself to sift through them. And they're blocking out some things I see here, doing their own version, not of declassification per se, but, oh, of a journalistic scrub perhaps. I'm not really sure exactly what they would call it, because they're not really qualified to do the things that they're doing when it comes to removing sensitive information. But ordinary Internet users are being swept up into this.

Now, I have many people who know me and know what I used to do in a -- what feels like a prior life now, say, did you see the latest revelation? Do you see what they're doing? This is Orwellian. This is big brother. This is absurd. And I say, yes, yes, it is. Why are you surprised? That's where I am now on this. And I don't mean to be glib or smug. Sometimes I do. In this case I don't. In this instance, as we find more and more of these data dumps coming out, I have to say to people, well, yes, of course, don't you see everything on the Internet essentially now for all intents and purposes is collected, it is under surveillance, it is being kept. That the government now, because it's protecting you from the terrorists, from the terrorizers, the government has decided that it needs all of the information it can get on all of us at all times, even though it doesn't seem it's ever able to stop many of these threats from actually becoming a reality.

So we see once again in the dragnet that the N.S.A. is running, allegedly according to "The Washington Post," according to the snowing document that is -- snowing documents that they have in their possession, some of which have been published in the post at least in piecemeal, much of the information that's being collected from this N.S.A. dragnet that's suppose to protect us from terrorist organizations, it's just the stuff that you're sending to your families and friends. In fact, 160,000 intercepted conversations is what the "Post" is claiming, including emails, instant messages, photographs, social network posts and other document.

The trove included messages exchanged from 2009 to 2012 and some were hundreds of pages long, with 90% of the individuals not targets, but rather I guess you could call them collateral Fourth Amendment damage. Maybe that's how we should start referring to this. The Fourth Amendment seems rather clear, and yet when it comes to national security, when all of a sudden the intelligence community is in a place where the national security apparatus more broadly, we have to include the White House and the Pentagon. When they have a moment, they can tell us that we're under such dire threat. They do as they did over the weekend, by the way. I didn't even care much to delve into the specifics. I just know there was a threat, Fourth of July weekend. DHS looking for something. They're going to take even more time now, squirt out even more milk bottles and look through even more laptop cases and all the rest of that, because that's really going to stop the terrorists. So much of it is needless theater, but it's theater to a broader purpose.

And now you have to understand it's theater that has a couple of things that make it very tricky to walk back. We're always told we're under threat and that if we don't do these sort of things, if we don't allow the government to trample on the Fourth Amendment, to decide that it's able to ignore the Constitution when it's convenient, we don't do those things and the terrorists will win. Or at least the terrorists will strike at us. They will harm us. They will do bad things to this country. And so now so many Americans in fact have been brought up in this sort of statist culture. When they talk about these things, you'll hear them say, I have nothing to hide. And they don't seem to understand that the founders didn't say I'm against a general warrant because I'm illegally importing goods, although some of them were. They didn't say I'm against the concept of my home and my business being rummaged through by Redcoats, because I'm doing so much illegal stuff. They just said that that's not what the state should be able to do.

It's too much power in the hands of the state, that it relies too much on the good graces of those who have been given authority by the citizens of this country or in that case of course by the king. And it was unacceptable. It's not a question of innings or guilt. It's a question of how much power you're giving the government to intrude upon our daily lives and to cowice from citizens into subjects. Social media posts. Apparently your baby photos, apparently anything you write to anyone at any point in time could be or is already collected by the same government that promises you, there's so many safeguards in place, it will protect you.

Let's keep in mind this is the government that has one of its senior most officials from the I.R.S. pleading the fifth amendment. Can't talk about what I did in my professional capacity, can't have that discussion. Why? Oh, I wonder. Seven hard drives crashing. Seven hard drives that are irretrievable. In one instance at least with Lois Lerner, they've been destroyed. That's the government that's saying don't worry. We have total access to all of your stuff but we promise we won't abuse it.

You see, they don't necessarily want to abuse your stuff. They're not necessarily targeting any individual out there right now. But they can target every individual. That has of course a chilling effect on all of us. But more importantly, they can target specific people as they need to this time. And as you will see, a state that begins to run roughshod over the people, doesn't take kindly and this is a historical truth. You can look back to any country that has gone to radical. When people speak out, they have to make examples of people. When people all of a sudden step out of line, when citizens say, this is too much. This government no longer is representative of me, of my values, of what I believe in when they start to have that conversation. Then the government, the one-eyed cyclops that is the government decides to crush dissent. And guess what, with a could be easier crushing dissent when you have access to everything a person has ever said or done. When you have access to secret law, not only secret law, secret warrants.

And when you can avoid the scrutiny of fellow citizens, one of the only checks we have tyranny apart from the Second Amendment, when you can avoid that as a government entity by claiming secrecy, national security privileges. Sorry, you can't know about that. If you were smarter, if you had more to offer, perhaps we would tell you, but you're just a lowly citizen. We are the lords in the intelligence community, in the national security community, and you are the serfs. Deal with it. This is the offer they're making to us now or perhaps it's an offer we can't refuse. And this is what they say to us.

And now they wonder why we come out and say, well, you want us to trust us and yet why should we. You want us to trust you, government, and we see how you act in so many different capacities, and instances. This same government that can't secure the border, that lies to our faces for years about how secure the border is.

We're going to be talking about that extensively in just a little bit today on the show. That same government is saying to you, give us unlimited surveillance authority and power. You won't know about it, so don't worry, it can't hurt you. But it is going to be unlimited. Give us that power and we'll protect you. That's an offer that's been made by many a tyrant to many a peasant centuries and centuries, millennia back, actually. Give us the authority and everything will be fine. We just had Fourth of July. We just had our Independence Day and been with it. Perhaps we should start to think a little bit more seriously about what freedom actually means here at home and what the government is asking us to do on a regular basis, or even more egregiously, just doing and expecting us to not make a peep about it.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.