Thomas Jefferson said:
“Truth can stand by itself. Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. …Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself … she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
Why then, if truth is sufficient to herself and if free argument and debate are allowed, are we constantly told that “the debate is over”? What have they to fear of further debate? If I’m not telling the truth, why then do they attack this program and me so viciously? Lies, that are broadcast nightly, are easily stopped. There are laws; there are standards. Even if you think I’m wildly irresponsible, you have to know that News Corp., a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars, is not going to risk everything on my irresponsibility.
Yet, the phone doesn’t ring. Why? Because the truth is on my side.
Well, we’re not playing their game any longer. While we continue to argue the facts, they just keep moving the ball down the field anyway. That’s exactly what they’ve done with health care and the Democrat senators who jammed this down our throats, have the nerve to make statements that they’ve done the work of the American people. We didn’t want their bill: 85 percent of us are happy with the health care we have. So while claiming that only the elite few had health care, the fact is, it was a precious few for whom they were working.
So, the pattern has been: We share the facts, then they make their claim, then the truth comes out, because they do something that refutes their claim.
All this week, we’re going to close the case on the all the facts we laid out last year. And it’s pretty easy to do. Let’s start with Mark Lloyd:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
GLENN BECK, AUG. 28: This is disturbing. This man’s name is Mark Lloyd. He actually lamented on the fact that non-state-run radio stations prevented the incredible revolution of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK LLOYD, FCC CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICER: In Venezuela with Chavez really an incredible revolution, a democratic revolution …
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK, SEPT. 22: It’s not like he wanted to regulate who’s allowed to have any kind of power, right?
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
LLOYD: We have really, truly good white people in important positions and the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions and unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions, we will not change the problem. We’re in a position where you have to — you have to say, who is going to step down so someone else can have power?
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
When I pointed these out, the left went on attack. I could go on for an hour with their hysterical rantings, but let me just give you one — just in the interest of time — from Mark Lloyd himself, who claimed to simply be victim of a “right-wing smear campaign” not to mention “exaggerations and distortions” on his First Amendment remarks.
Now, granted, we have to get into the Way Back Machine and go all the way back to the book Lloyd wrote in 2006 to find what he actually wrote about freedom of speech — and frankly, I’m not even sure America was a country back then — but here’s what he said:
“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies … the purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.”
It’s interesting to note that Mark Lloyd also called what happened in Venezuela “democratic” — a “democratic revolution”. Now, sadly, these facts are tricky — facts have often been referred to as “stubborn.” And so they are. That’s probably why it took so long for Lloyd get around to explaining himself, but finally here’s how Mark Lloyd responded, in mid-December: “I am not at the FCC to remove anybody, whatever their color, from power. I am not a supporter of Hugo Chavez.”
You’re lying in one of your statements then: Either you think Chavez had an “incredible revolution” or he didn’t. You either think some have to step down so others can have a chance or you don’t.
They’re asking you to pretend that one set of videotaped remarks just don’t exist.
We also told you where Lloyd stands on the Fairness Doctrine:
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
LLOYD: What we’re really saying is that the Fairness Doctrine’s not enough and that having a — having a sort of overarching rule that says, you know, broadcasters ought to be fair, ought to provide issues important to communities and that they ought to do it in a fair and balanced way is simply enough unless you put some teeth into that and put some hard structural rules in place that are going to result in fairness.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
But then Lloyd says he never wanted Fairness Doctrine: “I am not at the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine through the front door or the back door, or to carry out a secret plot funded by George Soros to get rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or any other conservative talk show host.”
He’s right; he’s not going to restore it. He told us that it doesn’t go far enough. He wants something possibly much worse. Maybe it’s just me, but is it beyond a reasonable doubt to assume that it would be something that resembles Chavez’s “incredible revolution”?
The facts are that Lloyd does believe in the revolution; he does want Venezuela’s government-controlled media, here.
OK, so the Mark Lloyd stuff? We’re not arguing it anymore, unless and until my phone rings with a reasonable explanation, case closed.
Last summer, during the health care debate, we told you that the administration’s math just didn’t add up. That it would be impossible to add 30 million people to the health care rolls, while at the same time, adding no additional doctors or nurses and not have rationing. Because some bureaucracy would have to decide who would receive rationed health care, the term “death panels” was applied.
Here is the fact: On August 6, 2009, I said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AUG. 6, 2009)
BECK: I want to make it very, very clear: What these people are talking about is how to ration in the case of an emergency. They define that as a shortage — a shortage of kidneys, hospital beds or flu vaccines — a shortage. But what we have to remember is universal health care creates another shortage: a shortage of money. And when we are out of money, these people will begin making the rules governing your health care.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Does that sound crazy?
Well, the left thought it did; attacking me, Sarah Palin and anyone else who dared suggest that health care would need to be rationed:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
KEITH OLBERMANN, MSNBC: There is no “death panel.” There is no judgment based on societal productivity. There is no worthiness test.
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the end, the lie of the year, by far, according to poltifact.com — there’s our drum roll — was this: It was from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin saying seniors and the disabled would have to stand in front of Obama’s death panel so that bureaucrats can decide whether they are worthy of health care.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
Then, the truth, finally discovered by The New York Times, in a front-page article about our mushrooming, unsustainable debt, said this: “The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.”
So, The New York Times says it, but SEIU named me “fear-monger of the year”? Are they?
We also discovered a very unusual situation with Obama’s “cash for clunkers” campaign on Cars.gov:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: If you log on to this at your home …
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, FOX NEWS: Right.
BECK: … everything in your home is now theirs?
GUILFOYLE: Basically, and there’s nothing you can do.
(CROSSTALK)
JONAH GOLDBERG: Well, not your couch, just your computer.
GUILFOYLE: Yes, you may not like the language, it may be off-putting. But it’s completely legal. They’re well within their recourse to do so and it’s very broad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Well, that brought out the bloggers.
Trueslant.com: “Beck’s hysterical rantings have no basis in reality or fact and as usual the same dedicated collection of wing-nuts and conspiracy theorists have picked up the story as gospel truth …”
Little Green Footballs: “Is there a point at which most reasonable people will start realizing that Glenn Beck is a raving freakazoid nut sandwich? What a disgrace; this is nothing but unjustifiable fear-mongering …”
Blog For All: “Beck is an idiot who clearly hasn’t done his research … there’s plenty of things to criticize about the (cash) for clunkers program … but this isn’t one of them.”
I was a “conspiracy nut,” “idiot,” “insane,” “hysterical” and a “Luddite” to name a few. For the uninitiated, Luddites were groups of workers in early 1800s England who organized to destroy machinery, fearing technology would replace workers. Yeah, that’s me — a real technophobe. That’s why I utilize every medium known to man.
Part of the rap from the left was that the Web site was set up only for dealers — which we made clear all along:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
BECK, JULY 31, 2009: The dealer goes to Cars.gov and then they hit “submit transaction”
BECK, AUG. 3, 2009: Tonight, an incredible update on the “cash for clunkers” disclaimer that forced car dealers to give the federal government their computers as federal property.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
The dealers’ computers could be considered federal property when they logged on. We also warned that this could spread to all of us. Is this sort of government intrusion suddenly of no concern to the left? The same people who wailed and wept at every move George Bush made with the Patriot Act — something still in place under Barack Obama, by the way.
All was well, after the administration changed the warning the next day. They said it was simply “poorly worded.” Really? You mean the White House lawyers are so bad, that they can’t even properly word the disclaimer for a $2 billion program that was supposed to kick start the economy? Bush should’ve insisted that the Patriot Act was just “poorly worded” even though that program wasn’t directed against American auto dealers, but Al Qaeda.
— Watch “Glenn Beck” weekdays at 5 p.m. ET on Fox News Channel
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