Glenn Beck Starts a Revolution

Glenn Beck is a popular talk show host for Fox News. He has the third highest ratings behind Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. He recently launched a movement to engage patriotic citizens in the cause of changing the direction of the country. This Friday, March 13, he is encouraging viewers to gather their friends and family to watch his 5pm show. In front of a live studio audience, Beck plans to explain how “we the people” can take our country back.

The driving force behind this effort comes from the unprecedented failure of our elected leaders. The fall of the stock market combined with our huge national debt is threatening to destroy our future. The Obama administration’s proposals for tax hikes, spending programs and government intervention is not hopeful change, but rather, an irresponsible move that will prove disastrous to our free market economy.

Beck has found inspiration to address this crisis from our Founding Fathers. He calls his agenda “We Surround Them” and bases it on 9 principles and 12 values taken from patriotic sources. He displays the principles using Benjamin Franklin’s famous 1754 “Join or Die” campaign drawing.

In the Revolutionary era, Franklin used the image of a dismembered rattlesnake to relate the need for the colonies to unite together to fight tyranny. Beck is renewing the symbol to express these Founding principles and to remind viewers that they are “not alone” in their beliefs.

So, what are these principles? They are distilled from the work of W. Cleon Skousen and his book “The 5,000 Year Leap.” Skousen was a staunch anti-Communist. Ronald Reagan was so impressed with Skousen’s work that he wanted to make his book mandatory reading for all students. Unfortunately, the effort was blocked by liberals in Congress.

The Beck set of principles is a short-hand version of the Skousen research. It can be boiled down to: a belief in God; the sovereignty of the people; moral values; and, respect for family, the law and private property.

Principle number one identified by Skousen is adherence to Natural Law. The Founders believed that Natural Law is the only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations. This was the first, and most important, priority to ensure peace, prosperity and freedom in the American form of government.

Principle number two states that a free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. Franklin remarked, “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” John Adams said, “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The Founders believed all things are created by God. Therefore, upon Him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible.

This is followed by another principle: the proper role of government is to protect these equal, unalienable rights, not provide equal things. The Founders also believed in the principle that a constitution should protect the people from the frailties of their rulers. Madison said, "if angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.... [But lacking these] you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself" “In questions of power, then,” explained Jefferson, “let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Principle 14 reveals that life and liberty are secure only so long as the rights of property are secure. John Locke reasoned that all things in the world were given as a gift from God, but that once a person adds ingenuity, labor and value to change it, then that property becomes invested with exclusive individual rights of ownership.

The next principle says that prosperity is maximized whenever there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations. Prosperity, the Founders believed, depends upon an unencumbered environment of four basic freedoms: the freedom to try; the freedom to buy; the freedom to sell; and, the freedom to fail.

Finally, principle 27 equates the destructive power of debt to that of an invading army that destroys human freedom.

You can find out more about these principles at GlennBeck.com. Will this movement succeed? It’s hard to predict, but it may come down to Franklin’s assessment spoken over 200 years ago: “We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately." (send comments to WFC83197@aol.com, or mail to: POB 114, Jacksboro, TN 37757).