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CHALKBOARD LESSON: 6 Eternal Truths of Self-Governance

December 08, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

Progressives want you to believe the Declaration of Independence is a worthless document. Why? Because it is the foundation upon which our house is built, and it's a house of freedom, equality and personal responsibility --- not government control.

"The Declaration of Independence tells you six things in the two opening paragraphs that are eternal. It tells you there is a higher law than man's law. There is the law of nature. Does it happen in nature? And if it happens in nature, that's good. Then we know that's a natural right," Glenn explained Thursday on radio.

He went on to detail the other truths established in the Declaration that ensure our rights as American citizens:

1. There is a higher law

2. All men are equal and have rights

3. Our rights come from the creator

4. Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights

5. Government gets all of its power from the consent of the governed (the people)

6. When a government becomes destructive to those ends (protection of our God-given rights) we have the right to abolish or change it, and to institute a new government that will make us happy and secure in our rights.

The Declaration of Independence is what we believe. Combined with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, these three powerhouse documents have the ability to restrict the government and restore our Republic.

Enjoy this complimentary clip from The Glenn Beck Program:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

The Declaration of Independence tells you six things in the two opening paragraphs that are eternal. It tells you: There is a higher law than man's law. There is the law of nature. Does it happen in nature?

And if it happens in nature, that's good. Then we know that's a natural right.

Now, does God come up above that and say because we're not an animal, we don't have a right to go kill other people for our food?

Yes. He says thousand shall not murder. He tells us what to eat. There's another law that usurps what happens in the animal kingdom.

And those two -- those two are your framework for all rights. It says, "All men are created equal and have rights." These rights come from the higher law. Nature and nature's God.

And the rights are not from any man. They're inalienable. So they come from God, which means no one can change them. Because I hate to break it to Al Gore: You can't change nature.

Rights are from the creator. Four, the government is only instituted -- what's its job? Well, it's got to build roads. It's got -- no, it doesn't. Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights.

PAT: Oh, and -- and to make airports nicer.

GLENN: Yeah, no.

PAT: You want to make them really shiny. You want to have a mall.

GLENN: Governments, their main job -- their main job is to preserve the rights that you find in nature and nature's God.

Then the government gets all of its power. It has no rights. It has all of its power from the consent of the governed.

So who is the government serving? The people who are giving it power.

And it has to listen to the consent of the governed.

Well, I contend the Supreme Court isn't doing that. I contend the G.O.P. isn't doing that. The Democrats aren't doing that. Bush didn't do that. Obama is not doing that.

That when a government becomes -- let me get the exact words. When it becomes destructive to those ends -- which ends? To protect your right, which comes from God and nature. Then you have the right to abolish or change it.

But there's more. Everybody -- everybody who is made at the government stops there. We're going to abolish it. We're going to burn it down.

Okay. You have a right to do that. But you'll notice, there's not a period after that line in the Declaration of Independence.

To alter or abolish and -- key word -- and to institute a new government, laying its foundation and organizing powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to make them happy and secure in those rights.

Everybody now is for anarchy. Burn it down. No! You have a right to alter or abolish. But what are you going to replace it with?

And you only have the right to alter or abolish, if that government will hearken to the higher law. Nature's God and nature's laws. And that government is instituted to secure those rights, not to build more hospitals, more bridges. Not to ensure world peace or keep you safe from terrorists.

Now, progressives want you to believe that the Declaration of Independence is a worthless document. Then I contend, we are 229 years old and not 240, which everyone in the -- on the planet will tell you we're 240 years old.

Let me give you an example: The Declaration of Independence is the what we believe. What is it we believe?

Men got together. When you want to build a house, you generally meet with an architect. And the architect says, "What do you want it to be like? Be specific. I want to know, what do you want it to feel like? What do you want it to look like? How do you want to use the rooms? What do you want to see in the windows? Do you -- what do you want?"

And you start generally, "We want something cozy. We want something magnificent. We want something to bring the outdoors in. I want to stop seeing the dreary weather. I don't want to see my neighbor." Whatever it is.

But generally speaking, an architect wants to hear what you feel. What is the point of each room? What is the point of your house, and what should it say?

When you finish that and they finish the document, you engage him to do it, and you sign a contract. Everybody in the room signs a contract. This is what we want. We're going to build that.

Then you have to go get a builder. And the builder comes in. And you say, "See this? I want to build this." And he says, "Okay. Well, to build that, I'm going to need this amount of money. I'm going need to these things. We're going to have to do this. We might have to change your vision a little bit here or there."

All men are created equal -- you got some slavery going on here. We might have to change some things. But I understand your intent.

Are all people going to be equal? Are you telling me that all the kids can use any bedroom at any time?

Yes, the baby's room can't be a baby's room the whole time. The baby is going to grow up. So, yes. We said that that's the baby room, but it has to be a room that a teenager could be in too.

Okay. Just want to make sure. Because you said it was the baby's room.

Yes, but things will change.

Okay. Great.

And you all sign that document.

Now, if you've had a problem with a contractor, like everybody has, you might also do a third document that says, "Oh, by the way, I've been burned by some contractors before, and you will not do these things." I know you're the contractor, but you do not have the right to do these things to my house or my property or my money.

Now, you know who didn't sign something like that? The builder of the Guggenheim. The builder of Falling Waters. Frank Lloyd Wright. He didn't care what you wanted.

In fact, he -- he went so far as one of his houses, the woman said, "I collect art, and my art is really important. And I want art on all of the walls." It pissed him off so much, that she would dare tell him what to do, he made it impossible for her to hang any art on the wall of her home.

Instead, he built a special room with little easels and a stairway to a loft up above, where she could walk up the stairs and look down at the easels at her art. That is what you get from working with Frank Lloyd Wright. That's a guy that you would have a third Bill of Rights -- yeah, you can't do these things.

This is the Declaration of Independence. What do we want the house to feel like? The Constitution is how do you build that? And the third one is, you can't do these things. The Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights restricts the contractor so you don't end up Frank Lloyd Wright. If you take away, what do we want it to look like? That's the architect's renderings

PAT: And, again, that's exactly why the Bill of Rights is a charter of negative liberties. It tells the --

GLENN: Yes.

PAT: It tells the builder what he cannot do to the house.

GLENN: Correct.

PAT: Because if you tell him the things he can do, anything that's not spelled out, he'll believe is his right.

GLENN: His right to do.

PAT: And he can go ahead and do it.

GLENN: Right. And so they say, we want to make it clear. It's in the first document that among these things -- put we just want to make that really clear.

PAT: These aren't the only things.

GLENN: We know that that's in the draft here. We know that the architect has put that in. So you can see the pretty picture and it's in the plans, but we want you to know: Those aren't the only things. There are also these things that you cannot do to the house.

And if you don't have the architectural drawings, the builder doesn't know what the hell he's even building.

That's the problem. The progressives, the first thing they did was get rid of the Declaration of Independence. It doesn't make any sense. What did Martin Luther King say? What stopped us? It wasn't the Constitution.

It was -- it's about time this country starts living up to its ideals, that all men are created equal.

Well, if the Declaration of Independence is worthless, then why should we give a flying crap about that?

Because we hold that truth to be self-evident, that's why. Because that's the house that we built. That's the image of who we are. The machinery with the Constitution may have gotten lost because the builder is no longer even using it as a reference point anymore.

And, in fact, the builder is saying, "By the way, I think those warnings that you said that I can't do those things, that third document -- I don't even think that third document, I can interpret that. And believe me. I've got nine other contractors over here, and they've looked at your -- your building plans. You can't build a house that way."

Well, wait a minute. I'm sorry. You get your power from the consent of me. So I guess your nine little men over there don't count over my vote. Because I got my family -- my 330 million people together, and they outweigh your nine freaking people, Mr. Contractor. So you're going to leave it there.

But we do what most people do when they're building a house: I knew that was wrong. I didn't want to say anything because I thought they knew better. And then you're living in a house you hate.

That is the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Restore that, and you won't have a problem with globalism. Because the house was never designed to be globalist!

Follow these three things, and we won't have a problem with poverty. Because it says we have the rights and the responsibilities to care for each other, not the government.

Follow those things, and we're going to be okay.

Featured Image: The Glenn Beck Program

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

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.

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.