Last night on TV Glenn and David Barton talked with a studio audience about the need for reconciliation. We have been so conditioned to 'win' arguments and to be pitted against one another. But real power, and real progress can only come through reconciliation.
Below is a transcript of this segment:
Glenn: This summer, I’m going to launch something specifically on all lives matter. Not black lives, not white lives, not police lives, all lives matter. The key to solving, because we are at that place now that I’ve warned about for so long that it’s now happening, and it’s only going to get worse from here. It’s coordinated. You’re watching a play, and the only player that has not arrived on the scene is a true civil rights movement.
I’ve said this from the very beginning that I believe our audience is the civil rights leaders. They are the civil rights leaders of this time. You just don’t know it yet, but you are because what we’re fighting for are those basic civil rights—I am a man. Treat me as a man. But to be that civil rights leader, we cannot be worried about our rights first. We must be worried about others’ rights. You want to solve your problems, worry about other people. Your problems go away. Worry about other people.
So, we now have to come to a very disciplined place of reconciliation. Reconciliation is something that Martin Luther King taught that is crucial, and no one is talking about it now. What happened? Barack Obama got in, and what really is the attitude of many people in his administration? I’m going to show you what it’s been like. That’s not reconciliation. That’s revenge. We can’t want to win.
We (A) have to want to love and serve, and we look for reconciliation because reconciliation means we’re just going to reconcile the truth. Yes, you have some problems, we have some problems. Let’s find our way back to one another. It’s what Lincoln did at the end of the Civil War. He did not say now we make them pay. He said take your foot off gently, send them home, tell them to be with their families. With malice toward none and charity for all, that’s how we reunited the country. That’s how King was doing it in the 1960s. It’s how Gandhi did it. It was what Jesus was preaching, and that’s what we have to do, but that takes extraordinary discipline, extraordinary insight.
We are going to have to be much better than we think we can be at this point. We cannot be poisoned with anger. We have to absolutely love and truly be disciplined. There are going to be times they’re going to throw you up against the wall. Another reason why he said nonviolence works is because does anybody here have sympathy for the people in Baltimore, I mean the people who are breaking into CVS and burning it down? I don’t. Nobody will.
If you are standing there and you’re yelling and screaming and you’ve got guns or you’ve got Molotov cocktails or you are pushing people around, even if you’re right, nobody’s going to listen to you. They just want you to stop. So, reason why nonviolent resistance works is because you’re going to take a billy club to the head, and you’re going to take it. And when people see that, people, as long as you’re not too far gone, and we may, we’re approaching this time. As long as we’re not too far gone as human beings, people will see that image, and they will say that’s wrong, that is wrong. I may not even agree with him 100%, but I know that’s wrong. And that’s what leads to reconciliation. No hatred, that’s tough, but that’s our mission