Glenn Beck reacts to the op-ed ‘every American should see’


January 28, 2014

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a letter from billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins in which he compares the progressive war on the one percent in America today to Nazi Germany’s singling out of Jews in the 1930s. Perkins’ comments have gained so much attention, the venture capital firm he founded has actually denounced his remarks. But on radio this morning, Glenn explained why he agrees with Perkins’ sentiment.

“There is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that came out over the weekend that every American should see,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “I think Tom is right… He is a hero. He is a hero. Somebody needs to say it. It is the same seed.”

The letter, titled “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?” reads:

Regarding your editorial “Censors on Campus” (Jan. 18): Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its “one percent,” namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.”

From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these “techno geeks” can pay. We have, for example, libelous and cruel attacks in the Chronicle on our number-one celebrity, the author Danielle Steel, alleging that she is a “snob” despite the millions she has spent on our city’s homeless and mentally ill over the past decades.

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent “progressive” radicalism unthinkable now?

Tom Perkins
San Francisco

Mr. Perkins is a founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

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After the letter was met with ire on various social media platforms, Kleiner Perkins tweeted: ”Tom Perkins has not been involved in KPCB in years. We were shocked by his views expressed today in the WSJ and do not agree.”

Glenn found himself agreeing with Perkins assertion that that ‘truth’ is often difficult to see in the moment, but history ends up telling a very different story. In fact, Glenn did a lesson with his Sunday school class that centered on universal truths and how those truths can be distorted.

When did human beings first realize the earth was round?

Two of the teenagers in Glenn’s class were able to answer that question correctly. It was the ancient Egyptians that first discovered the earth’s circumference, and yet the maps were never updated with that information. Why? Because it didn’t fit the narrative.

“Now, how is it we didn’t know that the world is round? How is it that the maps never changed? How is it that in 1492, they were actually saying we could fall off the edge of the earth? Because it didn’t fit the narrative of those who were in power,” Glenn said. “So how do you lose truth? Truth is discovered and rediscovered over and over and over and over again… There are three factors I think that makes truths disappear.”

Glenn believes those three factors are fear, ignorance, and greed. And he outlined the danger of each:

1. Force and fear

“How is [truth] lost… One, force and fear. Use force. I will take you and shut you up and lock you in the tower. You can ask anyone from Galileo to Tyndale,” Glenn said. “The king says, the power says: Be quiet or fear… It doesn’t have to be the government. It can to be any mob-like mentality that has force over you, can put pressure on you. Step one: Force and fear. That’s the way you lose it. “

2. Ignorance and apathy

“We talked about this last week. The National Crimes… Why are they national crimes? They’re national crimes because you turn the other way; you stop looking at the truth,” Glenn said. “Kristallnacht was absolutely horrific. Would have never been considered in 1930. But nobody warned… because there were thugs up at the top. They shut people up…
Don’t you see? Ignorance, apathy. I don’t know. I don’t care. National crimes.”

3. Greed and envy

“The first part of this is greed… Greed is not necessarily bad unless it makes you do things that are immoral. Wanting to have more, wanting to be more… that’s not bad. But if it makes you do whatever you have to do, even those things are illegal or immoral, then it becomes bad,” Glenn explained. “Then you couple greed with envy because that’s the other side of the greed coin. If everybody else is greedy… then envy sets in. Well, they have it and I don’t. How come I don’t have it? I should take it from them. And then the whole thing burns down.

So how do you avoid the trap of having to consistently rediscover the universal truths? You must ensure you have an engaged and educated population.

“If they don’t want it, they won’t do it. If they want it, they’ll do it,” Glenn said. “When I first started educating myself, I could afford one class at a university. That’s all I needed. And then I started using the library. Then I went to the bookstore – when bookstores actually had books in them. And I educated myself. I’m a self-educated man. A lot of people will look down on that. So be it. I’m proud of it.”

“You have everything you need,” he concluded. “We win. Man does not lose those self-evident truths. The moment… people understand they have all they need… we win.”

Furthermore, worthy of comment:

Sunday morning on the History Chanel they presented film depicting the 1930s in Germany and how the Third Reich rose to power. The German people were very close to poverty due to the loss of WWI and war reparations. Then Hitler entered into the fray, as one Berlin journalist at the time, coined a phrase, “the man (Hitler) was like a crazed ape let off his leash” The German people began to regain a more normal financial situation, because of Hitler’s leadership and how he put the average citizen back to work. Things were indeed looking up and German pride was back. Of course, little did the general population know, or understand the situation that Hitler had gotten them into, turns out, their loving Fuehrer, had spent almost every last Deutschmark in the German treasury. In short, Germany had to go to war. Up until this point, it was largely the confiscation of Jewish wealth that funded the recovery thus far, but cash was becoming scarce and new methods involved raiding neighboring states to confiscate their wealth were on the books. Austria went down without a fight, Czechoslovakia followed suit and was weakly handed over, because of an appeasement mentality of Britain, France and the US, These three nations didn’t want anything to do with war. The first world war was still fresh on everyone’s minds, and the major powers were simply turning a blind-eye on the rising dictatorship that was fast growing right before them. These western nations were all hoping against hope, that a policy of “wishful thinking” would be sure to save the day.

Enter “Sir Winston Churchill” – From the early thirties, this loan voice, fought heavy opposition from all sides trying to warn his nation and the rest of the world that Hitler was a madman and that he was going to make good on his threats made public in his book Mien Kampf. But no one believed him until it was almost too late.

In his book “Politics Among Nations” international relations expert Hans Morgenthau made this statement;”Of all the factors that make for the power of a nation, the most important, however unstable, is the ‘quality of diplomacy'”

What Morganthua was referring to, was the most powerful nation(s) in the world are nothing if not lead by men who have the ability to rightly articulate strong position and then back it up. He said, “Diplomacy, one may say, is the brains behind national power. If its vision is blurred, its judgement defective and its determination feeble, all of the advantages of geographical location, in self-sufficiency in food, raw materials and industrial production will in the long run avail a nation very little”

By what has been demonstrated in recent talks with Iran from within the brain-center of Obama’s administration, that dismal display should be all the proof one needs, demonstrating to the fact, that America no longer has strong leaders with moral guidance with the ability to lead her. Simply showing your teeth and boasting your strength and then, exhibiting little, or no resolve to back up what you said, is not diplomacy, but wishful thinking at best. It is the same shameful appeasement policy that Britain tried using with Hitler just before world-war broke out.

In 1932 before Parliament, Churchill made the following observation and one would think he was talking to current US leadership, he said, “I cannot recall anytime when the gap between the kind of words which statesmen used and what was actually happening in many countries was so great as it is now. The habit of saying smooth things and uttering pious platitudes and sentiments to gain applause – without relation to the underlying facts, is more profound than it ever has been in my experience.”

And who would argue today that history is not repeating itself?

“There is nothing new in the story, its as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalog of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act, when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” – Winston Churchill

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