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Jonah Goldberg: If Hypocrisy Were Helium, We'd All Have Funny Voices and Some Would Float Away

Jonah Goldberg --- comedian or acclaimed author and senior editor at National Review? You decide. Goldberg joined Glenn on radio Wednesday to offer his hilarious take on the absurdity that is Washington, DC. It's either laugh or cry, right?

Enjoy the complimentary clip or listen to this segment for details.

GLENN: I have to tell you, I'm so excited about the next two people that we have to introduce you to today. This hour, we have Jonah Goldberg from National Review. He's a guy who I don't know if he knows this or not -- I think I've told him before -- has really changed my life. He wrote a book called Liberal Fascism, stuff I didn't even know. Nobody was taught. His dad was a real pioneer in this field and kept the torch alive. And Jonah has done such a great job to explain progressives and liberal fascism. And it opened my eyes to an entirely new world and changed the course of my life.

I love having him on and reading his points of view. And he has a lot to say about what's happening. So we're going to get an update on what happened yesterday, since we last met on -- in Washington, with the Comey letter. And McMaster. And -- and his press conference.

Also, next hour, a serial entrepreneur. The guy who started Priceline. He has about 900 patents to his name. He was called by Forbes, the Edison for a New Age. He's the guy who came up with the friend button on Facebook. I can't wait to get into this guy's head as a -- as an entrepreneur. That's next hour.

We begin this hour with Jonah Goldberg and what's happening in Washington. How do we make sense of it? Beginning, right now.

(music)

GLENN: Welcome to the program, Jonah Goldberg. How are you, sir?

JONAH: Glenn, great to be here, and thanks for the kind words up front. That was great.

GLENN: Jonah, you're watching everything that is happening in Washington, DC, and trying to make sense of it. The media does not have any credibility at all on trying to say, "Rule of law. And, gee, we can't have somebody handle classified material, that doesn't know what they're doing with it." They have no credibility. It's a farce to watch them as they're talking about this, when we know what they did with Obama and Hillary Clinton.

However --

JONAH: Yeah --

GLENN: -- if we want to be consistent, we're watching this and saying, "This does not look good."

Can you take us through this, especially what happened yesterday?

JONAH: Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, look, as a big picture point, as I've been saying for a while, if hypocrisy were helium, we'd all have funny voices and some people would just float away.

(laughter)

And it is absolutely -- as I keep saying to some of my friends on the right who are absolutely right, in their criticisms of the double standards of the mainstream media and how the mainstream media is freaking out about stuff that they yawned about under Barack Obama -- that's all a perfectly good point to make, and it's a good argument to make. But it's a necessary argument, but not a sufficient argument, in the sense that, if the things that Obama did -- and just to -- when Obama did X and the mainstream media didn't freak out, and you criticized the mainstream media for not freaking out, and then when Trump does X, and you criticize the mainstream media for freaking out -- well, you should be freaking out too since you're -- if you believe in the rule of law, you think Obama violated the rule of law, and you stomped your spoon on your high chair for eight years about what Obama was doing to violate the rule of law and then Trump violates the rule of law, and all you have to say is, "Look how hypocritical the New York Times is," well, then you're being a hypocrite too. You have a double standard too. You don't call out a Republican president for doing stuff that you condemned the Democratic president for. Fine. Call the New York Times a bunch of hypocrites, but you're being hypocritical too. And this is a huge problem on the right, with a lot of people trying to find this safe harbor of anti anti-Trumpism. They don't -- and they're absolutely right that, you know, much of the left-wing freakout, this resistance nonsense and all of that is absurd. I mean, so much of it has been, "Donald Trump put salt on his french fries. Hitler put salt on his french fries."

(laughter)

JONAH: It's that kind of nonsense. And I'm all for calling it out. But if that's all you're doing, you're a disservice. Because some of the things that Donald Trump has done are legitimately worth criticizing, which brings us to yesterday.

So we all remember -- I mean, it's amazing to -- you know, it's just barely a week. Barely over a week since Sally Yates testified. This -- the -- the space time continuum has been sort of accordioned in Washington. And it's this bizarre thing where each day sort of brings, usually right around my cocktail hour, which really ticks me off.

GLENN: 9:00 a.m.?

JONAH: Brings a new story -- well, yes, there is that.

(laughter)

Look, I have a tattoo that says, "If you don't start drinking in the morning, you can't claim that you were drinking all day."

But it's just -- so the White House, you know, announced that they fired Comey last week, turned out that the story that they brought out there was just flatly not believable, and turned out to be untrue within a couple days. Donald Trump told Lester Holt that he fired him because of the Russia investigation, which, from any other president would have everyone pulling their hair out because you're just not supposed to say that. You know, you're not supposed to say that you didn't like the investigation into your campaign or into you or whatever. And you called it off because you -- and you told -- and you fired the FBI director because it wasn't -- he didn't make it go away.

And so this sort of gets to us the core problem, is that Donald Trump's greatest defense is incompetence and ignorance. He doesn't know how the system works.

He doesn't have an appreciation that some rules and procedures that are traditional in a White House are there for a good reason.

I don't know if you guys remember, you know, the parable of -- of Chesterton's fence. G.K. Chesterton has this wonderful story, where he says -- he's talking about progressive reformers.

And he says the progressive reformer is the kind of guy who sees a fence in the middle of a field, has no idea why it's there, and says, let's tear it down because there's no good reason for it to be there. I can't imagine why it's there.

And Chesterton says, "The only time you have a reason to tear down the fence is once you understand why it was put up in the first place. Maybe it's keeping out the ice zombies and the white walkers." Who knows. And Donald Trump has contempt for all of the traditional rules, all the traditional procedures. And he wants to go off the cuff. And so when he does stuff like axe the FBI director, as we learned yesterday, to go easy on an investigation into Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser, it seems utterly plausible that, you know, he can just be like, "Oh, was I not supposed to do that?" You know, because he doesn't know -- you know, he doesn't know what he doesn't know. And the problem --

GLENN: But if you look at --

JONAH: One last point, the problem with the left is they all want to make it about Russia, collusion. You know, they want to go to 11 on all of this stuff. And they want to have it both ways. They did this with George W. Bush too. They wanted to say he's an idiot, and they want to say he's a genius mastermind of an international mastermind of a conspiracy. You can't have it both ways.

GLENN: Yeah. So I don't think he's a genius mastermind of a conspiracy. I think you're right. He has contempt for rules. He doesn't want to live by those rules. And, in fact, one of the sources that we talked to Erick Erickson about yesterday, he said, you know, look the guy is a huge Trump supporter, supported him all the way through the campaign. Erick said, I couldn't even talk to him during the campaign because he was so rabidly Trump. But he was one of the sources that has leaked the information about what really happened. And he said he's doing it because the president will not listen to any advice. He sees all advice as an attack on him. So he is isolated.

And he's saying, we have to leak it to the press, because we're hoping that he'll listen to the press more than -- you know, and have him driven back into our arms, saying, okay. What do I have to know about this?

He said, he's just out of control, and really bad things will happen if he doesn't start taking some common sense advice on, "No, Mr. President. We can't do that because of X, Y, Z." Now, we can find another way to do it, but we can't do that.

JONAH: No, look, I agree. I had a column -- I wrote a column for the L.A. Times yesterday. It's up at National Review today. Calling on Michael Pence. You know, Mike Pence is the one guy, the one constitutional officer in the executive branch that Donald Trump can't fire. And so he -- you know, all these other guys in the cabinet -- some of them I like, I respect a lot. All these people on the senior staff, some of whom I like and respect, they can all be fired. And they all seem to think that they have to audition every day for their job. Mike Pence doesn't.

And Mike Pence was humiliated by the president last week. And not for the first time. By going out and saying, "Oh, no, we fired Comey on the recommendation of the deputy attorney general, and it was all through proper procedure, and we had waited for the DAG to get there. Of course this has nothing to do with the Russian investigation." And then two days later, Donald Trump uses a capitulate to throw him under a bus.

And Mike Pence should march into the Oval Office and say, "Mr. President, if you do that again, I may have to resign and run against you in 2020, or I'm going to start speaking freely to the media on the record." You know, he can't be fired, and he would have an enormous bully pulpit.

GLENN: Okay. Wait. Hang on just a second. That was my advice for Hillary Clinton when Bill Clinton did this to her with the blue dress.

JONAH: Right.

GLENN: She should have marched out and said, he's still my president. I still agree with his policies, but no woman should be treated this way. And what we work out in our marriage is our business. Stay out of our marriage. But no woman should be treated that way. She would have been the most powerful woman in the world. She, however, decided to stay in, I think for her own power and everything else. And that was kind of the arrangement that they had.

With Pence, I wonder if Pence and McMaster, who I have great respect for -- although I saw him tap dance like nobody else yesterday. It was an amazing answer from him yesterday. And I'm wondering if these guys are saying to themselves, "Look, if I leave, I don't know who he's going to have for advice. And I'd rather be in here. And I'll take the hits for this, but we have got to get him on track and keep him in place. And who is going to replace me? It could be anyone."

JONAH: No, I agree with that. I have to assume that H.R. McMaster, to the extent that he kind of -- as you put it, tap danced and parsed over the last 48 hours, he was doing it either to protect national security by minimizing the damage of this story, or because he thinks that if I'm not in there, we're going to go back to someone like Mike Flynn or worse, and I need to keep, you know, things operating in as professional manner as possible. I have to think it was a patriotism in some way or another.

GLENN: I think so too. He's an amazingly credible man. And he knows -- I mean, what he said yesterday was, anything the president wants to do is appropriate, legally it's appropriate.

Then they asked, so did he do anything appropriate? No. Well, he just said anything he wants to do is appropriate. And he must -- he knows that to come out with Jerusalem as the city and the Israelis, that is wildly damaging to our spy apparatus. Wildly damaging.

JEFFY: Although, I still think there's a possibility that Israel is taking one for the team, and that it was actually Jordan. Because --

GLENN: Wow.

JONAH: -- you know, it's not like Israel is going to break its relationship with us over this. They understand, and they've got all this stuff coming up on this visit that's of bigger importance. But if Jordan had been revealed as the source, it could have really -- I don't know. Who knows.

GLENN: Wow. Wow.

JONAH: But, look, I wrote this the other day. I keep thinking that poor Reince Priebus and Mike Pence and these other guys, I honestly think their hearts are in the right place. I imagine all of them, like Jerry McGuire in the locker room, begging Cuba Gooding Jr., "Help me, help you." You know, I mean, it's like, if Trump could just get a little discipline, you know, and get sort of -- a little less addicted, a little weaned off the drama and the reality show vibe that he clearly thrives on, he could still get important things accomplished. But it's like you can't break through to him.

And this thing about, you know, back channeling to him through the media, that's been going on since day one. I mean, that's the only reason why I actually liked watching Morning Joe so much for the first couple of months of the administration, is because it's like reading Pravda. You know, you just never know who is like signaling from what point of the PoleP euro through the press, to the first among equals.

And I think that that's -- but that's a problem. If he's consuming and getting all of his advice filtered through what he sees on Fox & Friends or printed out from Breitbart.com, that is no way to run a country.

GLENN: Okay. I only have one minute. One more question.

STU: Politically, Jonah, isn't it the issue here that his surrogates, their most effective defense is to basically say he's incompetent, he's new, he's trying to figure this stuff out? But that's also simultaneously, the one thing that they absolutely under any circumstances cannot say.

JONAH: No, that's right. And that's why -- and I wrote about this months ago -- they fall back on this he's a man of action, he's a man of wisdom. He knows things that we don't know.

And the problem with that kind of rhetoric is that it may work for a moment politically -- although, it's credibility is diminishing -- but that's also cult of personality talk. You know, that is not how conservatives, that's not how people in a democracy are supposed to talk is just say, well, he's the president, and he has the supreme judgment, and who are we to question it? The whole point of democracy is to question the judgment of your political leaders. But that's where the surrogates have to go. And I don't think it works for them very much at all anymore. And it doesn't help send off anybody who isn't sort of already in the tank.

GLENN: Jonah, 30 seconds. Can you tell me what we should watch for? What's the good sign or a bad sign that we should watch for?

JONAH: Well, if the rivers turn to blood...

(laughter)

GLENN: Okay.

JONAH: I don't want to send any of your advertisers -- buy gold.

(laughter)

GLENN: Jonah, God bless you, man. Thank you very much.

JONAH: Good to be with you guys. Thank you.

GLENN: Jonah Goldberg, senior editor of the National Review.

RADIO

Did the Minneapolis mayor just put Somalis before American taxpayers?!

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey recently kowtowed to Somali immigrants, even speaking Somali in a speech, amid a fraud scandal. But his decision to do so doesn't just appear to put Somalis before American taxpayers. Glenn Beck explains the dangerous secret it reveals about how the Democratic Party really views immigrants...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I've been talking about not making enemies, but speaking the truth.

That's the important part. Speak the truth.

Because I have now in my life, and you do too. I have evidence now, I've always -- I've always felt God existed. I feel like I know him.

I -- I have accepted him into my life. I have asked for forgiveness. And asked for salvation. I've received it.

I feel these things. And I have personal witnesses of a testimony to say, he exists. But for the very first time, we all have, as a collective, evidence that not only does he exist, he is involved in the affairs of man.

And the first one, that we all can agree on, is the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

That was an act of God. I'm sorry. But it was.

There was no way. There is no way, that was an act of God. God inserting himself in the affairs of men.

Because he's not neutral on things. That doesn't mean he's a Donald Trump guy, or a MAGA supporter.

It means, he will use things, you know, whether we like it or not, he will use things to further his agenda.

And that's not a political agenda. I also feel that it was a miracle. And this gets a little more sketchy. But I think it was a miracle in retrospect, what happened in 2020. Because we wouldn't have the president that we had today, if he had been elected in 2020. The other miracle is what we saw after Charlie Kirk. So why we don't put more faith into God. We're not alone.

We're seeing, he's showing up for the first time.

And we don't need to have these big arguments on big esoteric things.

We -- you know what, we just need people -- here's one. Let's agree that we should arrest people, that break the law.

Whether they're the president, or an illegal alien that has nothing.

You break the law. You pay the price!

Why -- how is it we can't agree on this. I don't know. Did you hear the Minneapolis mayor on this fraud? This taxpayer fraud?

We're talks about a billion dollars in fraud. Okay?

Your tax dollars going to Somalia, and going to some of it, Al-Shabaab, one of the worst terrorist organizations in the world. Your tax dollars, in fraud.

And here's the Minneapolis mayor. Play cut one please. Listen to this.

VOICE: Good afternoon, my name is Jacob Fry. I'm the mayor of Minneapolis. And we are here to respond to a number of credible reports from several media outlets relaying that there are as many as 100 federal agents, that will be deployed to the Twin Cities with a specific focus, targeting our Somali community.

To our Somali community, we love you. And we stand with you. That commitment is rock solid.

Minneapolis is proud to be home to the largest Somali community in the entire country.

They've been here for decades, in many instances.

They're entrepreneurs, and fathers. They benefit both the culture and the economic --

GLENN: Is anybody arguing with this?

Is anybody arguing with the Somali community?

They are not coming in to target the Somali community. They are coming in to target the fraud that is happening in the Somali community. See, he immediately jumps to race.

Because that's what that means. Once you tart talking about a collective. They're coming after the Somali community. You know you're into racism. You're into some ism, okay?

That's very reminiscent of Hitler. Because that's what he did, and everybody is the same. Only the certain German elites. Only the certain Germans with blue eyes and blond hair. Well, except for the Hitler leader, can rule the world. Okay?

That's racism. When you're saying, they're coming after the Somali community, what you're saying is, oh, well, they're racists coming in. But what he's actually saying is, look, we -- we're lumping every Somali in our community as clean!

Well, no. No. You can't say that. That's racism.

Just like I can't say, every Somali is dirty. You send in teams of professionals to find out, who is involved in this.

And I don't care if they're Somali or they're the governor, if they broke the law, they need to go to jail.

But let me tell you what's actually happening here. What's actually happening here, is 100 percent all about politics.

If he doesn't protect or appear to be on the side of the Somali community. If he doesn't make -- if he allows Feds to come in and mess with the Somali community, even the lawbreakers, he feels he can't win.

If you don't have the Somali community in many Minneapolis, you're not going to win.

Now, how un-American of me to say that.

Well, it's funny. Because he speaks about how un-American it is for Donald Trump to come in and send people into the community. To fight crime. How un-American.

Play what is it? Cut 42?

VOICE: That's not American. That's not what we are about. We're going to do right by every single person in our cities.

And to our Somali community (foreign language).

STU: Oh, my God. At least practice it in the mirror first.

GLENN: That's like me doing it.

That's like me speaking English. I mean, that is just -- that's embarrassing. That's embarrassing.

I mean -- and to follow that. Or to proceed that with, that's just un-American!

We're going to support every member of our community. That's un-American.

And so to our Somali community, you mean the American community? That has been here for decades?

Why are you speaking Somalian to them?

Why? Have they not melted in? No. Because we're a salad bowl. We're not a salad bowl.

You want a salad bowl, go over to Europe. And you'll have that delicious salad, that will not satiate any kind of hunger, ever!

We're a melting pot. Which would imply that you speak English, especially when you say, you know, everybody here, they're great Americans. They're great Americans.

Great. So let me say in English, because I know you're learning English, oh, you're not learning English. Oh, okay.

Well, that -- oh, that's right. We're a salad bowl. That's un-American. That's un-American.

I want -- somebody said to me the other day, you know, Glenn why -- why -- why -- why don't people understand immigration?

And I said, what do you mean by that? Well, you know, people want immigration, and they don't want people coming in. And they're saying they're for immigration.

Wait a minute. Hang on just a second. Everyone I know, that I think is reasonable, everyone that I know, they love immigrants. They love immigrants.

The immigrants that come over and they're like, thank God I'm here. I got here as fast as I could. I mean, I'm a citizen. And they light up when they say they're a citizen. They'll talk about our Founders. They've -- and they'll speak English.

They want to be citizens. Because they know what freedom actually means. Okay?

I want those -- I want those people in every day. I would love to have Somali citizens here, that realize what they escaped.

And realize, wow. That was a really bad scene. I'm glad I'm out of that. And I'm here.

Because I have the opportunity to be me.
I don't want the ones that were here, that are just trying to re-create Somalia. Go to Somalia. What! Why are you here?

Hang on -- you moved from Somalia so you could create another Somalia, except with loads of snow? I mean, help me out with that one.

STU: That was the problem with Somalia. Too warm. That was the big one.

GLENN: Too warm. Too warm. Not --

STU: Just everything else about it was great.

GLENN: Not just endless mountains of snow for months on end. I mean, come on. Come on.

STU: It's so strange.

You know, the -- the instinct behind a politician to think that the right thing to do is to come out, in the most awkward way possible and fumble your way through the language of a few of the residents of your city.

Like, what -- it's so pathetic, the pandering is just awful. And, you know, look, no one cares. I'm sure there's plenty of people in the Somali community that are entrepreneurs. And I'm sure they're doing a great job. And for the people that came here legally and are doing a great job, great. Those are not the people being charged with these crimes. Those are not the people who are defrauding autism programs to bilk the state out of millions and up to a billion dollars. That should be going to kids who actually have autism. Right?

GLENN: How about food?

STU: Food. Housing.

GLENN: How about food?

STU: Basic human needs, these programs that obviously, shouldn't exist to the levels that they do. As they're being manipulated this way.

If they're going to exist, they should be going to people who need the help.

People that might exist.

GLENN: And you know who is really hurt?

You know who really this mayor and this kind of philosophy hurts?

The Somali that wanted to come here, because they knew what America was.

What's happening is, they are allowing this growth of crime, corruption. You'll have warlords. You'll have Sharia law.

You'll have all of it.

The Somalis that came here for a new life, that wanted to escape all that, they're being forced right back into it by the politicians they thought represented the United States of America and our Constitution. And our rule of law!

Instead, they're speaking Somalian. Somalis. Somali -- instead, they're speaking that language, and -- and the Somali that came here for a better life has got to be like, what the hell? What? You've got to be kidding me! You're going to create what we just left!

It's sick. It's really sick.

And dare I say, un-American.

RADIO

"Modern Historians" are Trying to REDEEM Hitler... But Here is the BRUTAL Truth

Attempts to recast Hitler as a misunderstood figure and paint Churchill as the true villain are spreading again... and the historical consequences of that distortion are dangerous. The reality is that Hitler sought domination, not coexistence; prepared for war long before Britain acted; and pursued a worldview fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization. Revisiting these facts matters now more than ever, as modern ideological confusion threatens to blur the line between tyranny and freedom. This is a sober reminder that history’s villains are clearly identified, and the record proves it.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I saw an interview yesterday, talks about Hitler again. Trying to make Hitler into the good guy.

And Winston Churchill into the bad guy.

I just don't get it. I really don't get it.

History. Really history is not a choose your own adventure kind of thing. It's ink on paper.
Orders in filing cabinets. Telegrams, diaries. Bodies.

It's what actually happened, not what we hope happened.

So let me just set the record straight on something, again, that is circulating. And it just -- somebody just has to calmly just say, what the truth is.

The thing is now that -- that Hitler had no intention toward the West.

That Britain didn't have to enter the war. That Winston Churchill. Not Adolf Hitler is the villain, who dragged the world into conflict.

Oh, my God. Let me just say this calmly, factually, and finally. Germany's plans for Poland were not reactive.

They were premeditated. The argument says that Britain roped the West into war by promising to defend Poland. No. Germany had already prepared to destroy Poland long before Neville Chamberlain ever made a pledge. How do I know this? Because in my history valuate, I have one of the clearest pieces of proof. It's called fall vice.

It's Hitler's operational blueprint for the invasion of Poland, drafted in 1938, a year before Chamberlain said, we're going to guarantee their safety.

So Poland was not a spontaneous reaction. Hitler was a liar. I know that's hard to get your arms around. But Hitler was a liar.

It was not about German minorities. It was not about self-determination. It was about conquest.

A step in Hitler's explicitly stated road map. Austria. Czechoslovakia. Poland. Then the east.

Britain didn't pull Germany into war. Germany was already marching toward war. Global war.

The second thing that has to be said, clearly. Hitler didn't have designs on Britain and the West.

Really?

Well, Hitler wanted peace with Britain. Because we have the paper trail again.

No, no, no. He wanted peace. He had no western ambitions.

Well, how do you explain Operation Sea Lion?

Hitler's detailed plan to invade and occupy Great Britain. You don't draw amphibious landing schedules across the English Channel, just in case.

And before that, Hitler deployed a different strategy. Diplomacy, and subterfuge. In May 1941, the deputy furor Rudolf Hess, that's a name, flew solo into Scotland, hoping to secure a deal with sympathetic elements with Great Britain. He parachuted down. He claimed he was carrying an offer: Let Hitler dominate Europe, and Germany would leave Britain alone.

Well, that sounds really peaceful, unless you forget what Hitler meant by dominance. He meant dismantling sovereign nations, annihilating the Jews, the Slavs, the -- the -- the gypsies. Any political opponent. Millions of human beings. Just eliminate them.

It -- in what world? In what world could a democratic nation be friends with that?

Britain had internal Nazi sympathizers. And Hitler counted on them.

Hess wasn't flying blind. Hitler believed Britain was divided, and he was right. You know why he was right?

Again, in my vault, I have it from Hitler's own schedule that was on his assistant's desk, the whole time!

Now you have the name and the time that he arrived. Former king Edward. He abdicated in 36. He had clear documented sympathies for the Nazi regime. He met Hitler in '37. I know! I have the documents!

He was courted as a possible puppet monarch. He said, reinstall me, and you can do what you want. I'll help you.

The Nazi files recovered after the war, showed explicit German plans to reinstall him, after an occupation. Hitler was not avoiding conflict with Britain. He was planning a subversion.

Well, yeah. But Hitler's ideology. You know, made friendship with the West possible. What? What?

Even if you pretend not to see the invasion plans and the Hess mission. And the internal sympathizers. Even if you erase every map, every memo, every military order, Hitler's ideology made an alliance with the Western democracies absolutely impossible. And I'm going to get to Stalin here any a second. But hear me. Hear me on this.

Hitler believed that the state was supreme. That the German people existed for the Reich.

In America, the Constitution is supreme!

And it exists to limit the states. Rights come from the fewer or and the government in Germany.

In America, rights come from God. And the government is the servant, not the master.

The individual in Germany, spendable. The West is built on the sanctity at this time of the individual.

Racial hierarchy, is destiny in Germany. The West at its best, rejects racial supremacy.

The Declaration starts with all men are created equal. Not some races are destined to rule.

Nowhere in our document does it say, the state must expand endlessly. That's not compatible with anything. Anything.

You cannot align with a regime whose foundational premise is that human dignity is a myth.

Well, well, the West chose Stalin. Because we thought he was better.

No. We chose survival. People are arguing now that the allies should have sided with Hitler instead of Stalin. No rational reading of history supports any of that.

Hitler and Stalin were both monstrous. Monstrous.

And the RIPA PAC proved that they were natural partners in evil, carving up Poland like a holiday roast, okay?

But here's the brutal truth: Once Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, is that -- was that what it's called, Stu, you know? Barbarossa, right?

STU: Barbarossa.

GLENN: Barbarossa. When they turned to Russia. The question for us was no longer, hey, which dictator was better?

The question was, which outcome prevents Hitler from ruling all of Europe?

Because if Hitler defeated the Soviet Union, the resources of the east. All the oil. All the grain. All the industry. All the manpower, would have made the Third Reich unstoppable. So the choice was between two horrors. Which one?

Or do you want to stay out, and let them have all of that power. Well, yeah. Nowhere -- he's.

Only one Hitler had a trajectory of global domination at that time. Also, racial extermination.

And total state worship, that could not coexist with Western civilization.

We knew at the time, Stalin was just as bad. We knew we were going to be in war with Stalin at some point. And you know who really knew that?
Winston Churchill? He was the one saying, we can't have this guy as an ally. Britain did not drag the world into war.

Hitler did. And so let's go back to the central point. Churchill did not force a war. Chamberlain didn't conjure up a conflict out of thin air. The West didn't provoke Hitler. Hitler provoked history. He's the one who built the camps. And if you want to say you don't believe in the camps, God help us all.

He's the one who wrote Mein Kampf. He's the one armed in secret. He invaded without cause. He sought domination, not coexistence. To suggest otherwise, I mean, what is your intent, to rehabilitate him?

Hitler?

I mean, you're repeating the arguments Hitler made to excuse his aggression.

This is not about defending Churchill, who I think is a hero. But it's about defending the record, the truth. So in our moment of confusion and upheaval and ideological extremism, we don't lose our footing on the bedrock of fact.

This is the dangerous door we must not reopen. When we begin to question whether the West should have resisted Hitler, where are we going?

Would we entertain the idea that freedom and tyranny could have co-existed?

You're not just rearranging interpretations. You're reopening a door millions died to close.

History is not there to flatter us. Did the United States do bad things in World War II? Yeah. Did England? Yeah. Were we perfect?

No. Did we do the best we could?

Yes!

You know, sometimes -- sometimes your only choice is between bad and worse!

You cannot allow somebody like Hitler just to continue to grow and grow and grow and gobble the resources. And then take over the Soviet Union.

And then what? Have all of those resources to take the rest of the world?

My God!

It's so -- hmm. Sorry. I want to just keep this about facts. History is there to warn us.

And the warning is really, really simple.

Be very careful when someone tells you the villain wasn't really the villain.

Whoa, unto him, who makes evil good and good evil.

We know who the villains were. The documentation is very clear.

Trust me, I have a vault full of it.

You want to see it?

Come. Otherwise, you're just full of it!

When you have somebody telling you the villain is not the villain, that story never ends well. Fix reason firmly in her seat.

RADIO

THIS could COLLAPSE every major civilization at the SAME TIME

The United States, Europe, and China are all preparing for a coming global reset. Throughout history, civilizations have risen and fallen according to the same cycle of prosperity and debt. But never before has EVERY major civilization been on the verge of collapse at the same time. Glenn Beck breaks it all down.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Because for the very first time in world history. There's something new that has happened. The entire globe is riding the same wheel at the same time.

Okay? We're all in this debt cycle. And this has never happened before.

The cycle always begins the same way. The first step in this at the time cycle is discipline.

Discipline equals prosperity. Okay.

It goes right into prosperity. And every great empire starts with discipline. Rome did, you know, rebuilding after all the wars, strict budgets. Every great empire starts with discipline. Rome did. You know, rebuilding after all the wars. The strict budgets. Silver coinage. Land reforms. It helped restore, you know, the battered middle class. The Dutch Republic did the same thing: They invented modern finance, turning the swamp into the world's largest trade hub. Then the British empire did it after the glorious revolution. It brought fiscal stability and a gold-back pound, that the world trusted for over 200 years.

When that fell, America did it. After World War II, our debts were manageable, our currency was solid, backed by gold, productivity was unmatched, and we prospered. That is stage one. Discipline into prosperity. And prosperity if not darted, always leads to the second stage. Complacency into excess, okay? So excess creates this fatal illusion. The moment, you know, where we all look at each other, and go, this is great. It's going to be like this forever. It was always like this. It will always be like that.

Rome began borrowing heavily to pay for endless bread and circuses. France, funded the palaces and the pensions and the perpetual wars, through loans it could never repay.

Britain, in the late 19th century, took its global empire for granted, and levered -- levered itself into World War I.

Then came World War II. And then America beginning in the 1970s, untethered from -- untethered the dollar from gold. And discovered that debt could replace discipline.

So the second stage of the debt cycle is the age of entitlement, expansion. Imperial overreach.

Cheap credit.

And political bribery disguised as compassion.

Any of that sound like we've been there?

Done that?

The Dutch called it win handle. The trade in the wind.

Paper promises that replace real production.

We call it stimulus.

Easy money. Deficit spending.

Different words. Same exact sin.

That lees you to stage three. Financialization.

That goes to fragility. This is the most seductive stage. Rome debased its money until it was worth less than 2 percent of the original silver. The Byzantines watered down their unshakable dollar, if you will, and confidence collapsed. France printed their money, backed by land, until they were worth less and used as wallpaper.

Weimar, Germany, did the same thing. They destroyed a thousand years of savings in 18 months. Japan, 1990. Papered over its real estate collapse, with 30 years of zero interest rates.

And America, after 2008, discovered this intoxicating illusion, started by George W. Bush. I can violate the free market system, to save the free market system. That's quantitative easing. Money conjured up, without cost. Without any restraint. Without any consequence.

In stage three, nations convinced themselves, they're immune to any kind of gravity. Okay?

This time, it's different! We can manage this debt. Well, modern tools, you just don't understand. You know, the rules no longer apply.

You don't understand. Really?

Don't understand. The older rules always apply.

Because math is math.

And stage three always ends exactly the same way. Wherever it's tried!

The markets no longer trust the promises they're being fed, which leads us into stage four, the breaking point. Every empire eventually reaches a moment where its debts cannot be serviced. They can't be inflated away quietly. They can't be rolled over without consequence.

Rome reached it when they froze prices and shattered the last productive parts of its competent multiply France reached it in 1788, when it can no longer borrow. And that whole thing came to a head. Britain reached it in 1931 when it abandoned the gold standard.

Weimar reached it when inflation ate the soul of the nation. And extremism took over. Yap reached it, when its bond market effectively became nationalize. Propped up by its own central bank. Right now, America, Europe, China, Japan. And every other major power, listen to this carefully, have all hit stage four at the same time.

Never before in human history has this happened.

The bond markets are shaking. The currencies are all volatile. Politicians are praying that no one notices the numbers.

You know, that they no longer add up.

Stage four is not coming. We are now living inside the opening act. This is so important.

Yesterday, there was a story that said, that this is going to be the biggest Christmas season ever. And I'm wondering to myself, I see the prices. I go to McDonald's.

I go to the grocery store.

Any of us Walmart this weekend. I see the prices. And I'm looking at the prices.

And every time I'm looking at the prices, I'm like, how's the average person afford any of this?

And yet, we're spending. Spending. Spending.

And I don't understand it. And I fear we're doing what the government is doing. We're just spending because we can -- we think we can get out of it.

Then comes stage five. It's called the reset. Hmm.

Every debt system ends in one of three ways.

They inflate the money, so they can pay off the debt. And that's just an absolute wipeout. Weimar republic did it. France did it. Rome did it.

Just a wipeout. Then there's a hard default and political upheaval. Russia did that in 1917.

Argentina did it over and over again.

War leading to a new monetary order. That's another one.

And the neo -- the -- the Napoleonic wars. The British gold standard. World War II. Bretton Woods.

All of that. But there's always a reset. Always a new order that's born from the ashes of the old.

And here's what makes this moment unprecedented. Rome collapsed by itself. France collapsed alone. Weimar collapsed by itself.

Britain declined while America rose.

It was always one country coming down, and another one coming up.

This time, all countries. All countries, on both size, the free world and the not so free world, there's no one rising.

China is drowning in its local government debt. It's never going to say this, but it's a paper tiger.

Europe is fractured. And coming apart at the seams. Japan, demographic time bomb.

America is politically frozen and insolvent fiscally.

So for the very first time in world history. Every major civilization has reached its peak of the debt cycle.

This time, all at the same moment.

No one is coming up!

So what does that mean?

Well, for the very first time in human history, it means, when it arrives, it will not be regional. It will be global. It will not be slow. It will be systemic. It will be everywhere. Now, the hope, the history books don't tell, and nobody in the media will tell you this, is when every one of those resets, every collapse, every crisis, it created the conditions for renewal.

Rome, its fall opened the door for a new Christian civilization. France, the revolution there, birthed the modern nation state. Britain's decline cleared space for America's rise. The devastation of World War II led to the great expansion of prosperity, the greatest the world has ever seen. So the next chapter is not written. What happens to us is not written.

And it -- whether we rise or fall, from what's coming depends not on Washington. Not on Wall Street. But on us. In our homes, in our families. In our churches. And our communities.

The debt cycle is not prophecy. It is a warning.

You cannot borrow your way out of moral, fiscal, or spiritual bankruptcy.

Now, I don't feel like I chose this path. This -- with Bretton Woods and then 1972 coming off the gold standard. And what they did in 2008, to bail out all the banks. I didn't have anything to say. Did you have anything to say about that?

I didn't. I didn't. I wouldn't have chosen those things. But the world is putting something together.

And I want to show you what our choices are. Because right now, people say, you know, I don't like what Donald Trump is doing. Or, I don't like the World Economic Forum.

Or, I don't like what China. Okay. Great. But I want you to know, it's going to be one of these systems. Because it's being built.

It always happens. When one is coming down, some new system, usually a country.

But not a country this time. A new system begins to rise.

And it happens before the fall.