HOW TO WIN:

GLENN BECK’S

9/12 PRINCIPLES AND VALUES

BY

KENDAL BRIAN HUNTER

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Dedicated to patriots everywhere.

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 We are polarized

because we are politicized.

We are politicized because

government is too intrusive.

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 CONTENTS:

THE 9 PRINCIPLES AND 12 VALUES.

INTRODUCTION: THE POWER OF PRINCIPLES.

CHAPTER 1: America Is Good.

CHAPTER 2: I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

CHAPTER 3: I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

CHAPTER 4: The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the
government.

CHAPTER 5: If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is
above it.

CHAPTER 6: I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no
guarantee of equal results.

CHAPTER 7: I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to.
Government cannot force me to be charitable.

CHAPTER 8: It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my

personal opinion.

CHAPTER 9: The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to
me.

INTERMISSION: VALUES

CHAPTER 10: Honesty

CHAPTER 11: Reverence

CHAPTER 12: Hope

CHAPTER 13: Thrift

CHAPTER 14: Humility

CHAPTER 15: Charity

CHAPTER 16: Sincerity

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CHAPTER 17: Moderation

CHAPTER 18: Hard Work

CHAPTER 19: Courage

CHAPTER 20: Personal Responsibility

CHAPTER 21: Gratitude

AFTERWARD: THE POWER OF TEACHING

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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 THE 9 PRINCIPLES AND 12 VALUES
The 9 Principles

1. America Is Good.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

God “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that

disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” from

George Washington’s first Inaugural address.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

Honesty “I hope that I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to

maintain what I consider to be the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest

man.” George Washington

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the

government.

Marriage/Family “It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is

known. By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of

a family.” Thomas Jefferson

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

Justice “I deem one of the essential principles of our government… equal and

exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.” Thomas

Jefferson

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of

equal results.

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 Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness “Everyone has a natural right to

choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable

subsistence.” Thomas Jefferson

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government

cannot force me to be charitable.

Charity “It is not everyone who asketh that deserveth charity; all however, are

worth of the inquiry or the deserving may suffer.” George Washington

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal

opinion.

On your right to disagree “In a free and republican government, you cannot

restrain the voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or more properly

without thinking.” George Washington

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Who works for whom? “I consider the people who constitute a society or a nation

as the source of all authority in that nation.” Thomas Jefferson

The 12 Values

1. Honesty 7. Sincerity

2. Reverence 8. Moderation

3. Hope 9. Hard Work

4. Thrift 10. Courage

5. Humility 11. Personal Responsibility

6. Charity 12. Gratitude

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 INTRODUCTION: THE POWER OF PRINCIPLES.

This book is about principles.

A principle is a compact unit of truth, which has a wide variety of applications.

Since principles are so versatile—even to the point of having an infinite variety of

applications—it would serve us well to seek, to understand, to master, and to live

principles.

Specifically, this book focuses on Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Principles and Values.

These are core ideas, even patriotic principles that will renew our country and restore the

vision of our Founding Fathers. In our present political perplexity, these principles are—

and I use this word literally—a godsend.

Essentially, this volume is a midrash, or an extended commentary on these

principles and values. Being about fundamental ideas, many such books could be written.

It is hoped that this book will serve as flint and still, sparking thought in the reader, and

will fan a blaze of better, more ardent ideas.

Practically, these principles and values are habits that we can acquire. Spend a

day, a week, or a month focusing on each principle or value. Journal about it. Tweet your

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ideas. Blog your feelings. Improve your life. By extension, you will make improve the

lives of others, and ultimately the nation and the world.

Over two hundred years ago, at Concord Bridge, a shot was fired that was “heard

‘round the world.” Today, we need to live lives that influence the whole world. These

principles are the basis of such a life of political power holiness.

II

In Glenn’s first book, The Real America, he lists four steps that are essential to

change:

1. You must want it.

2. You must believe it.

3. You must live it.

4. You will become it.

ADD MOMENT: Give Glenn credit for taking the 12 Steps and shrinking them by 2/3rds.

The “it” you must want, believe, and live in order to become, is a better, more

patriotic citizen.

At the end of each chapter is a TO DO list. These are things you can do, or

questions that can perfect your thinking on the 9/12 Principles and Values. And, yes, we

did have home-schooled children in mind when we wrote this.

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 CHAPTER 1. America Is Good.

A person can be imperfect, yet still be a good person.

A country can imperfect, yet still be a good country.

America has had her share of critics. Surely some of it is misplaced, being a cover

for crass envy and jealousy, or a smokescreen for other nations’ inferiority complexes. As

Cleon Skousen pointed out in his book The 5,000 Year Leap, there is something special

about America, where in the space of just under 200 years, we went from horses and

buggies to landing men on the Moon. No other country, regardless of their past glory, can

claim such a feat.

As Glenn has written:

“America’s promise of freedom allowed the lone entrepreneur to bring the world
the light bulb, car, telephone, movie, assembly line, artificial heart, computer,
bifocals, sewing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner, safety pin, television,
cash register, crayon, power tools, the oil well, water tower, Popsicle, blue jeans,
elevator, repeating rifle, laser, polio vaccination, microwave oven, copy machine,
fiber optics, and cotton candy.” (Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, 105)

Yes, America is a miracle.

Nevertheless, some of the criticism is justified.

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 As Thomas Jefferson penned those sacred words, “All men are created equal,”

slaves worked his plantation at Monticello. In fact, the slavery question has been one of

the biggest reason why people—some sincere but misguided, other not so sincere—

criticize the country.

They see this country as being nothing more than a Rich White Man’s Club, and

the United States Constitution as a way of enforcing this exploitive order.

First, let’s set the record straight: America did not invent slavery. She inherited it.

This evil cultural practice existed long before 1776. Read the Bible, and study the life of

Joseph of Egypt, who was sold by his brothers into Egypt as a slave. In fact, this story

shows that slavery was not exclusively a racial matter—it was his brothers who sold

Joseph into slavery.

ADD MOMENT: Do you know how St. Patrick ended up in Ireland? When he was 16,

pirates kidnapped him and sold him as a slave to the Irish.

And, as to America, yes, the US Constitution as originally written (notice this

important qualifier) kept slavery in place. But pay attention to two important clauses.

The first is the so-called Three-Fifths Clause. It reads,

“1Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several

States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective
Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free
Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding
Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

Notice what this does not say. It does not say that slaves were three-fifths of a person, or

only had three-fifth of the rights of a white. It says that for purposes of allocating the seat

in Congress, they would be counted fractionally.

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 Glenn Beck explains:

“Idiots point to this as ‘proof’ that the Founders were racist Klansmen who wore
powdered wigs instead of white sheets—but nothing could be further from the
truth. This whole section deals with counting Americans (a census) for the
purposes of representation. It does not deal with placing value on human life”

“Many of the Founders actually wanted to eliminate slavery, but knew they
couldn’t push for it right away and still keep the Union together.”

ADD MOMENT: Since this incremental and long-term approach the same strategy the

Progressives use, isn’t this and example of the pot calling the kettle black?

Glenn continues:

“Idiots who argue with our Founder’s compromise have no concept of how
important this nation was, and still is. But our Founders knew. They had such a
clear understanding of what they were creating that it would be better to
establish and imperfect Union than risk having the great American experiment
fail before it ever got started.” (Arguing With Idiots, 270-272)

The second clause that needs discussing is found in Article 1, Section 9. In the

historical debate on slavery, it has been universally ignored:

“1The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing
shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the
Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on
such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

In plain English, what that says is that importing slaves would be legal in the United

States until 1808, then Congress could outlaw it.

Do you understand what that means? The US Constitution is not strictly an

abolitionist document; it clearly allowed for slavery. But because of this clause, it is also

not strictly a pro-slavery document.

What this means is that the US Constitution is a transitional document, from

slavery to abolition.

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 Although the document is not perfect, it was heading in the right direction.

Which brings us to the third point: the Thirteenth Amendment:

1Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for

crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate

legislation.

There it is. Here and now in 21st Century America, slavery is illegal. Regardless

of what happened in the past, the Constitution as presently constituted has buried the

issue. Since section two empowers Congress to enforce this amendment, we get the Civil

Rights legislation which has perfected this amendment and the process.

This is not to say that all racial problems have been solved. But the slavery

question is a dead issue, and has become a rhetorical Red Herring.

This is one of the reasons why America is great: she has an ability to change for

the better.

One Parting Though: If America is so bad, why do we give so much away in both

coerced foreign aid and freewill charity?

TO DO:

1. Get a journal and write down your thoughts and feelings about America.

2. Talk with your grandparents about what life was like when they were young.

3. Research your family history. Who was your first ancestor to come to America?

4. Visit a military graveyard.

5. Send a letter of thanks to a serviceman.

6. Fly the flag.

7. Read a patriotic book.

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 8. Review the words of the Pledge of Allegiance and the American’s Creed.

FOR MORE INFO: Read Glenn’s first book Real America Chapter 1 “The Real

Americans and the Real America,” and Chapter 11 “The Flame That Burns in the

Real America” Like Glenn, we all have our own Mt. Vernons, and then read

Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Chapter I: “The Reshaping and Redefining of

America,” and Arguing With Idiots, Chapters 10: “US Presidents” and Chapter

12: “The US Constitution.”

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 CHAPTER 2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

God “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards

the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”

from George Washington’s first Inaugural address.

America began with God in mind.

These lines from the Declaration of Independence make this clear:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This, of course, is not to say that we are a theocracy. The Founders did not intend

that—the First Amendment guarantees that, and we all understand that. What it does

mean, however, is our rights and our human dignity come from God.

There’s an old saying to the affect that we should never discuss God and Politics.

Yet our country was founded on a fusion of both of those ideas.

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 ADD MOMENT: That reference to “fusion” was not a subliminal message to subscribe

to Glenn’s newsletter. Honest!

I think we all understand the necessity—however unpleasant it is—of politics and

having a social order. But why is God so crucial to understanding America?

The philosopher Peter Kreeft observed:

“The question of whether God really exists is obviously one of the most
interesting and important questions in the world for most people, especially for
most philosophers. For God’s existence or nonexistence makes a difference to
everything, since ‘God’ means “the creator and designer and therefore the
ultimate explanation for everything’.” (The Philosophy of Tolkien: The worldview
behind The Lord of the Rings, 50)

Think about that for a moment: If God does not exist, then Jews can enjoy pork

chops, Mormons can have a snort of brandy and a fine cigar, and Catholics can live it up

during Lent—a year-round Carnival!

The belief or disbelief in God makes all the difference in our behavior.

It also makes all the difference in our politics as well.

The Declaration of Independence continues:

“That to secure these rights [i.e. life, liberty, and property], Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed.”

So the type of government we have reflects the religious climate and temper of the

people. For example, most Americans believe in God, and that humans are created in

God’s image, with a divine spark, or soul. Consequently, we have laws against murder,

rape, “cruel and unusual punishment,” and also laws to protect against fraud, robbery,

perjury, and laws to protect gun ownership.

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 Contrast that with the Soviet Union. Its political climate was shaped by the

Communist Manifesto, which has such gems as:

• “Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind

which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.”
• “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence:
Abolition of private property.”
• “In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we
traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the
point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent
overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the
proletariat.”
• “It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will
cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.”

ADD MOMENT: Go to your local welfare office and see if this is not true.

• “The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement
vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”
ADD MOMENT: Family Values, Stalin-style.

• “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare
that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social
conditions.”

Can you feel the two systems different temperaments? The Communist system is about

empowering government and uprooting all things, ultimately to turn the world upside-

down. The American system is about protecting people from abusive government.

And the key difference between the two systems is how they look at God.

After all, when God is dead, something must fill the vacuum.

Usually the vacuum is filled by human ego and folly.

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 II

From Glenn:

“I remember standing in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln years ago … I

looked at him sitting in his chair, and I cried. Now, what did I know of Lincoln I
knew that he freed the slaves, but I was an eighteen-year-old kid from Seattle who
grew up disconnected from race riots or white-only water fountains. I didn’t cry
for Abraham Lincoln, or the Civil War, or eve for the men fighting for either
side.”

“I cried for what I can only describe as an unrequited love for an America that is
always just out of reach.”

“We know it’s there. It’s the passion for perfection, a perfection that we all keep
striving for. Americans have never given up. Never. We have never said, “This
America is good enough,” and we never will.”

“That’s the Real America. And I think you’re reading this book because you
believe that you can help bring it back.” (The Real America, 30-31)

III

Bill O’Reilly divided the modern world into two ideological camps, the

Traditionalists and the Secular-Progressives.

Glen has discussed the dangers of the Progressivisms at length. Glenn Beck’s

Common Sense and Arguing With Idiots have key chapters dealing with Progressivism.

Read them. Memorize them.

ADD MOMENT: OK, you don’t have to memorize them—but read them several

times, so you can be coherent when you talk politics at the water cooler.

But the secular aspect is the more troubling part of the equation. Simply put, we

have too many lesson of history to fool ourselves into thinking was can succeed as a

nation and as individuals without God.

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 In fact, secularism is necessarily part of progressivism because progressivism is

really just a code word for people wanting to play God.

And because of this secularism, untimely it is doomed to fail.

Peter Kreeft explained it this way—and his term “modernist” is equivalent to

“progressivist”:

“The essence of modernity is the death of the spiritual. A modernist is someone

who is more concerned about air pollution than soul pollution. A modernist is
someone who wants clean air so he can breathe dirty words.”

“A modernist care about big things, like whales, more than small things, like
fetuses; big things like governments, more than small things like families and
neighborhoods; big things like states, which last hundred of years, more than
little things like souls, which last forever.”

“Thus a modernist is one who puts his faith and hope for progress in precisely
the one thing that cannot progress: matter.” (Kreeft, C. S. Lewis fro the Third
Millenium, 54)

Secularism, which is essentially materialism—(not “materialism” as being greedy for

gold and such, but the idea that the universe and people are just an “accidental

collocations of atoms,” a cosmic hiccup)—has no power to progress. That is the secret

and the essential flaw—secular Progressivism cannot progress. The whole movement is

an oxymoron.

ADD MOMENT: Oxymoron: It is not an anti-zit cream and it is not a dumb draft animal,

but a self contradictory phrase, like a round square, wet fire, customer service at the IRS

… you get the idea.

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 So God is essential. Included with this is service to God and service to others. As

I wrote earlier, America is not a theocracy. There is no top-down official creed, or iron-

clad dogma we are coerced into believing. However, there is a general spiritual climate

present in America.

Benjamin Franklin summed up the American religious outlook in six points:

1. 1That there is one God, who made all things.

2. That he governs the world by his providence.

3. That he ought to be worshiped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving.

4. But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man.

5. That the soul is immortal.

6. And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice either here or
hereafter.

There is power in these beliefs. There is power in faith. At a critical time during the

Constitutional Convention, this same Benjamin Franklin gave a moving speech:

“Sir”

“The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance &
continual reasonings with each other—our different sentiments on almost every
question, several of the last producing as many ‘noes’ as ‘ays’ is methinks a
melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed
seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about
in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government,
and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed
with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed
Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to
our circumstances.”

“In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political
truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when to us, how has it happened, Sir, that
we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to
illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain,
when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine

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 Protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All
of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of
a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this
happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future
national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we
imagine that we no longer need His assistance.”

“I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I
see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot
fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise
without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that ‘except the
Lord build they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also
believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building
no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial
local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be
become a reproach and a byword down to future age. And what is worse,
mankind may hereafter this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing
Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.”

“I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance

of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every
morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this
City be requested to officiate in that service.”

We cannot do it without God. We cannot win without prayer. We cannot succeed

without each other.

POSTSCRIPT:

Yes, religion and politics are sensitive issues. When they get mixed, they become

explosive issues. Yet, knowing full well that I am playing with dynamite, I make this

humble invitation:

To the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Skeptic, and the questioner—If you study the

lives of the saints and the faithful—Joan of Arc, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joseph Smith,

Thomas Moore, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa—you clearly see that the quest for

God can be quite an adventure. None of these faithful people were mollycoddles. They

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were powerful, dynamic, and heroic. They lived large, and set the example for all people

of faith everywhere.

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 ADD MOMENT #1: If you are a victim of secular government education
ADD MOMENT #2: And Jesse Ventura called religious people weak! I’d like to see him
(i.e. public schools), here is the lowdown:
go up against Joan of Arc any day!
• Joan of Arc: A young girl who led French armies and was burnt at the stake.

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Author of The Cost of Discipleship and executed by the

Third Reich for conspiring to assassinate Hitler.

• Joseph Smith: Colonizer, Mayor, Lieutenant General in the Illinois national

guard, first presidential candidate to ever be assassinated.

• Thomas Moore: Subject of the film A Man for All Seasons, refused to

sanction Henry VIII’s divorces. Executed by beheading.

• Martin Luther King: Leader of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s,

assassinated.

• Mother Teresa: If you don’t know who she is, this book is probably boring

you silly!

TO DO:

1. Pray.

2. Read your faith’s holy book.

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 3. Attend your congregation’s meetings.

4. Ask yourself, “Why do I believe in God?”

5. Peter Kreeft said “The question of whether God really exists is obviously one of

the most interesting and important questions in the world.” What difference does

God make? Why is it important to know the God exists? That He loves you?

6. Glenn wrote, “The application of your faith will change your life.” What does this

mean?

7. What is the crucial difference between Hitler and Jesus?

8. What is the relationship between love of God, love of man, and love of self?

9. Write a letter to God.

10. Read Glenn’s conversion story (The Real America, chapter 10)

a. Why did it take so long for Glenn to change?

b. Why did he do so much reading?

c. What is your conversion story?

FOR MORE INFO: Read Real America, Chapter 5 “Hitler and Jesus Had One Thing in

Common” and Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Chapter VI: “Is it a Rising or A Setting

Sun?”

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 CHAPTER 3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

Honesty “I hope that I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what

I consider to be the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”

George Washington

Since honesty is both a 9/12 Principle and a Value, I will discuss it in the values

section. This chapter will focus on the surrounding idea of trying to be a better person

today than we were yesterday.

ADD MOMENT: Since truth is a unit, there is overlap among the values and principles.

Since truth is infinite, we could not contain all the necessary principles and values in

one book. But we are trying to do the best we can, within our limitations.

Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, mentions that at a certain point in his

life he wanted to improve himself. In fact he described it as a “bold and arduous project

of arriving at moral perfection.”

He explained:

“I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all
that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I
knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might
not always do the one and avoid the other.”

That is the measure of a great soul. He saw his personal flaws, was honest about

them—the first of the Twelve Steps—and then decided to do something about it.

He continues:

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 “But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I bad
imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was
often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination
was sometimes too strong for reason.”

“I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our
interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping;
and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and
established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude
of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.”

I think we have all felt that way. We make a list of New Year’s Resolutions,

and then by the end of the week, we have broken them all.

But notice that Franklin did not get discouraged. He stepped back and then

rethought the process. He went back and studied the subject of personal virtue. Then he

made a list of the specific virtues he wished to have, and then worked at them

He explained:

“My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would
be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it
on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to
another, and so on, till I should have gone through the thirteen; and, as the
previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I
arranged them with that view …”

Notice two things. First, he did not tackle them all at once. Forget the “Snake

Eating The Mouse” model, where you do everything in one big swallow. You stop, then

break the task down into smaller, more manageable parts, and focus on the small task one

at a time, building up momentum.

He kept track of his progress in a small notebook, the forerunner to a daily

planner. He also had motivational quotes in the notebook. One was a Bible verse:

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“Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are

ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:16-17).

He explained why he included this Bible verse:

“And conceiving God to be the fountain of wisdom, I thought it right and

necessary to solicit his assistance for obtaining it; to this end I formed the
following little prayer, which was prefixed to my tables of examination, for daily
use.”

“O powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! increase in me that

wisdom which discovers my truest interest! strengthen my resolutions to perform
what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the
only return in my power for thy continual favors to me.”

This brings us to the second point: as we focus on these 9/12 Principles and

Values, we must do what Franklin did. We must use the them as stepping stones, going

from one to the next. Principle 2 is about making God the center of our lives. This sets

the groundwork for the rest of the principles.

Like Franklin, we include prayer as we move from principle to principle, from

value to value. Don’t do it all in one bite, or in a week-long cram course. Focus on the

value a week at time, or a month at a time. There are 21 values and principles—come up

with some system of learning the principles and values, practicing the values, and being a

principled person.

Franklin concluded:

“I entered upon the execution of this plan for self-examination, and continued it
with occasional intermissions for some time. I was surprised to find myself so
much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing
them diminish. … After a while I went through one course only in a year, and
afterward only one in several years, till at length I omitted them entirely, being
employed in voyages and business abroad, with a multiplicity of affairs that
interfered; but I always carried my little book with me.”

27
Franklin admitted that he was never perfect with the process. Some of the stuff was

beyond his reach. But the fact remains that he at least tired. And he was certainly heading

in the right direction.

And that is key: at least we are working the in the right direction.

TO DO:

1. Think of a person you admire. Why do you admire this person?

2. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? What are you

doing to make that change?

3. Ask your spouse to make two lists—one of 5 things you do well, and the other

with 5 things that you could improve on. Set goals for self-improvement.

4. “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of

the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased.” How could this

saying change your life?

5. A year from now, you will be a year older. Will you be the same person, a worse

person, or a better person? And ten years from now, you will be ten years old, but

what type of person will you be?

6. What type of person does God want you to be?

FOR MORE INFO: An Inconvenient Book, Chapter 5: “Blind Dating: Playing the

Powerball of Love” touches kinda-sorta on this topic. And Chapter 16: “How to

Remember names by Glenn something or other” deals with personal improvement.

But definitely read Arguing With Idiots, Chapter 7: “The Nanny State.” If

government is making all of the choices for us, we are like perpetual tweenagers—
28
well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, and well-caged. There is no growth where

there is no choice.
29
 CHAPTER 4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority,

not the government.

Marriage/Family “It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is known.

By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a

family.”

Thomas Jefferson

Let me begin with several ideas:

1. The family is biologically obvious.

2. The family is psychologically obvious.

3. Marriage is both a sacrament and covenant.

4. It’s about power.

5. It’s about education: You control the future by controlling the present.

First, the family is biologically obvious.

Although I don’t endorse all of his philosophy (such as slavery), Aristotle

correctly observed that the family was the basic social unit. Stop and think about that.

30
You have a man and a woman who fall in love. Then by the natural biological process,

they bring children into the world.

It does not get more complex than that. Nature and nature’s God intended families

to be formed and children to come into the world by these families. The importance of

families and children is hardwired into the Cosmos.

ADD MOMENT: Can you telecommute breastfeeding? Do you really want a

government bureaucrat to be a wet-nurse?

Second, the family is psychologically obvious. In addition to our biologies, we

also have a psychology—a psyche, a soul—with specific needs and drives. The family—

a husband and wife with children—is suited for family life.

No matter how loving, how committed, and how charitable other people are, no

one can replace the love that a parent has for the child. In the early years the mother

nurtures the children. She is the guardian angel over the precious souls God has placed on

earth.

Later on, the father initiates the children about the peril and the promise of the

world outside the home. Not only is he the dragonslayer, he is also the sage and priest

that initiates the children into the mysteries of work, responsibility, and standing up for

what is right.

Together, the angel mother and the dragonslayer father prepare the next

generation to take on the world. Both are needed for the healthy development of children.

Third, marriage is both a sacrament and covenant.

31
 We talk a lot about God in this book. Since He is infinite and eternal, He

influence affects (and effects) all aspects of our lives. He is interested in who we are. He

is also interested in whom we marry, how we marry, and what we do in marriage, and

especially how we treat our children in marriage.

That is why marriage is not just a civil ceremony, a short-term partnership

between two (hopefully sober) consenting adults. Because each soul is precious and has a

spark of divinity in it, marriage must be a sacrament and a covenant. God must be the

mediator, and at times the atoner, of marriage. We need His grace to succeed as partners

and we need His grace to succeed as parents.

In The Real America, Glenn wrote:

“In the Real America your home is the center of your universe and the center of
your home is the dinner table, the most important piece of furniture you have. It
doesn’t have to be fancy—it just has to be comfortable, so that everybody likes to
be in that room and around the table.” (The Real America, 3)

He also compared the home to a temple, and said, “the most sacred place on earth is your

home.”

And he is right to use such powerful religious language. There is a spiritual, even

a divine aspect to marriage and raising a family. In addition to being a dragonslayer and a

angel mother, the parents are also priest and priestess—and for a very good reason. The

only way we can succeed as parents in this twisted-up world of ours is to daily come

before the Altar of God, within the walls temple-home, and to confess our sins, sacrifice

our pride, and atone ourselves to God, to our spouse, and to our children.

Then, and only, then, can we save America.

Fourth, it’s about power.

32
 The Communist Manifesto has these lines:

“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal
of the Communists.”

“On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On
capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only
among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the
practical absence of the family among proletarians, and in public prostitution.”

“The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement
vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”

Radicals want to abolish the family.

Reread those paragraphs several times to let it sink in. The radicals—be they

communist, fascist, neo-whatevers, enviro-whichevers, or what-have-you—see the family

solely in economics terms. They see men as exploiters, women as prostitutes, and

children as indentured farm hands.

Yes, there is an economic component to marriage: Dave Ramey, the personal

finance specialist on the Fox Business Channel can tell you that. But Marx and Engles

did not mention love.

Love is a real thing between a man and a woman.

Husbands indeed do love their wives; wives truly their love husbands; and parents

infinitely love their children. To say that all families are loveless, with each member

seeking to stab each other in the back or to take advantage of each other is a gross

generalization, inaccurate, and ludicrous.

Of course not all families are perfect. But just because a family is imperfect or has

disobedient children does not mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, so

33
to speak. And certainly because there are serious problems with some families doe not

mean we should turn to the government to solve everyone’s problems.

Wrote Glenn, “Our Founding Fathers had this down: The solution lies in the

home, in the heartland, with the people—not with the people in Washington.” (The Real

America, 105)

ADD MOMENT: Imagine if getting a marriage license was like registering for a gun.

Read Arguing With Idiots, page 48 on New York gun registration laws. It could

happen.
In the first Federalist Paper, Alexander Hamilton warned that

“A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the
rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness
and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been
found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter”
(Federalist, 1)

In plain English, what Hamilton said was that when people pontificate about “standing up

for the rights of The Little Guy,” beware. Their concern for The Little Guy tends to lead

to despotism.

In our day, not only is it a concern for non-existent constitutional rights, but also a

concern for compassion. If something is done in the name of compassion, “for the

children,” “for the common good” or in the name of both human a Christian decency,

beware. Gilded cages and golden handcuffs are on their way.

Just because something is a good idea doe not mean that we should make it

national policy. Neighbors helped neighbors raise barns, dig wells, paint houses, long

before the Welfare State came into being.

34
 As Thomas Paine observed, we should not confuse government with society:

“1Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or

no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have
different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by
wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our
affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages
intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a
punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state
is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.” (cited in Glenn
Beck’s Common Sense, 117-118)

By surrendering power to politicians and bureaucrats to make us more charitable,

we may be replacing a smaller problem with a bigger problem. That is why the Founders

limited government.

The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights that government give us, rather it is a

means to limit the abuse of power by specifically listing the powers that government has

and what rights people retain. The Bill of Rights is not about limiting people, but about

limiting government.

The preamble to the Bill of Rights says:

“The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting
the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse
of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.”

“Restrictive clauses.”

“Prevent misconstruction or abuse of power.”

The Bill of Rights itself codifies these ideas:

19th Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.

35
 ADD MOMENT: Read Arguing With Idiots, pages 292-293 for Glenn’s take on these

two amendments.

That is what it is about—preventing misconstruction and abuse of government

powers. Think of what the family would be like if government micromanaged families.

You spend all day at the Post Office, at the DMV, dealing with the IRS, then you come

home and get the same thing. You would report to meddling social workers, be open to

inspections, and treated as if you were a parolee.

ADD MOMENT: I’ve never been a parolee, so I’m only guessing here. The

point is that

government

cannot help families; it can only hurt families. Look what government welfare has done

to black families in the ghetto.

Fifth, it’s about education: You control the future by controlling the present.

In Common Sense book, Glenn has this paragraph:

“You try to tune out the bickering [of the television pundits] by watching an
entertainment show—but there are times when you’re uncomfortable watching
them with your kids. You’re not a prude, but you happen to think that a three-
year-old shouldn’t be watching shows that treat sex lightly and mock mother’s
and fathers. But what can you do? The other shows are worse.” (Glenn Beck’s
Common Sense, 4)

I’m glad Glenn wrote this. We should be concerned about how Hollywood’s

attitudes to the 9/12 Principles and Values are influencing your children. We should be

36
concerned when our children are taught to hate their country and to hate their families.

We should be concerned when we wee shows where our boys are being marginalized, our

daughters are being pornified, and the population as a whole is being idiotized.

We must reassert the Castle Doctrine. We must take charge of thing.

ADD MOMENT: The Castle Doctrine is a legal principle that codified the old saying

that a man’s home is his castle. Dad, you are the King; Mom, you are the Queen; and

your children are royalty.

Since we do not have an Orwellian Department of Family Oversight, the next best

thing the statist can do is control children by co-opting a pre-exiting government

institution: public schools.

Keep in mind that item 10 on the to-do list in the Communist Manifest was “Free

education for all children in public schools.”

Why? Control. You control the future by controlling the preset. You control the

future by controlling children.

ADD MOMENT: If Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom hired me to control the world, I would do

it by controlling four thin things—1. breakfast cereal, 2. cartoons, 3. video games, 4. toys

—then wait for the brainwashed children to grow up.

Glenn has touched upon the importance of families, family issues, and education

many times.

The Real America:

37
 • Chapter 1 “The Real Americans and the Real America”

• Chapter 11 “The Flame That Burns in the Real America”

An Inconvenient Book:

• Chapter 2. “Marriage, Porn, Adultery, and Divorce: The Circle of Life.”

• Chapter 5. “Blind-Dating: Playing the Powerball of Love.”

• Chapter 8. “Education Through Indoctrination.”

• Chapter 14. “Child Molesters: A Fiery Solution.”

• Chapter 18. “Aging: God’s system of Depreciation.”

• Chapter 21. “Parenting: The Case for Abstinence.”

Glenn Beck’s Common Sense:

• Chapter I: The Reshaping and Redefining of America.

• Chapter V: “The Cancer of Progressivism.”

Arguing With Idiots

• Chapter 3. “Education: Readin’, Writin’, and Futility.”

• Chapter 7. “The Nanny state: Saving You from Yourself, On Right at a Time.”

• Chapter 8. “Owning a Home: Waking Up from the American Dream.”

As you can tell, the family is assaulted on so many sides, both culturally and

politically. On top of that, our own mortal shortcomings can be used against us. But

government—which is made up of men and woman as fallible as we are—cannot save us

from ourselves. When they try to do it, they exacerbate the problem.

But it gets worse than that.

38
 Glenn has spoke about two quotes that highlight the dangers of radicalized

education.

The first is from Woodrow Wilson: “Our problem is not merely to help the

students to adjust themselves to world life. Our problem is to make them as unlike their

fathers as we can” (Arguing With Idiots, 70).

The second is from Al Gore, and is a paraphrase: “Look, there’s a lot of things

you understand instinctively but you parents don’t understand because they’re too

trapped in old thinking” (Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, 70).

Pause for a moment and let those quotes sink in.

Then pause for amount at think about what they mean.

On one side you have the Traditionalists. By Traditionalists, I do not mean people

who submit to the “democracy of the dead,” or blindly follow things because “that’s they

way we have always done them, so don’t rock the boat.” By tradition, I mean people who

follow things that have worked, that have withstood the test of time. In this sense, it may

be better to refer to them as Experientialists. Correct tradition endures because it is based

upon successful experience.

On the other hand, you have the Secular-Progressives. Remember how secularism

is essentially materialism, and how matter alone cannot progress. We need God’s spark to

make things operate. Also consider how, if God is gone, something needs to fill the

vacuum. What fills the vacuum is human vanity and the State. Mark Levin’s book

Liberty or Tyranny contains an excellent analysis of the evils of this statism.

Now put all of this together with the 9/12 Principles and Values. The radicals and

statists are trying to overturn the correct traditions, which were based on experience, that

39
have kept this country together. They replace them with new-fangled schemes an pop

psychology.

They do this by controlling education. Education is the means by which children

are acculturated, and way that the mores and values and principles of a country are passed

on. As they make clear, they want to jettison these traditional values and principles, and

overwrite there own untied system upon reality.

It won’t work. It never has. Read C. S. Lewis’s books The Abolition of Man and

That Hideous Strength, to see why.

So why are we concerned?

The reason why we are so intent on stopping this is because of the damage that

can be done in the process. It is one thing for FDR to have the AAA slaughter and bury

pigs while millions of Americans were starving. We can deal with hunger with Victory

Gardens.

But what happens to a human soul as we let the politicians and bureaucrats

impose untested and harebrained schemes on our children?

We must assert control over our own children.

Even if we do not formally home-school our children, we must be teachers in the

home.

Even if we do not give our children formal religious education, we should at least

take them to Sunday School, and read the Scriptures to them.

We may not be able to do everything, but we must do something to raise our

children in the right.

40
 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart

from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)

TO DO:

1. Tell your family that you love them.

2. What do you like about your family? What would you change?

3. If you could make one change in your family, what would it be? Then make that

change.

4. How does an out-of-control government hurt families?

5. Glenn compared the home to a temple. What is a temple, and how is a home like a

temple?

6. Why is the home’s dinner table so important?

7. Write the birthdays of your wife and children on a calendar.

8. Each year Glenn Beck does a Post-Valentines Day Recovery Show. Make this

next Valentine’s Day different somehow. Do the same for your wedding

anniversary?

9. If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you learned survival skills to stay alive.

In your new family, what new survival skills do you need to learn? What skills do

you need to unlearn?

10. On page 8, in The Real America, Glenn spoke about the culture-clash between

Leave It To Beaver and The Sopranos. He said, talking about a hypothetical

encounter between the Cleavers and the Sopranos, that the clash “would not have

destroyed the fabric of the Cleaver family life [b]ecause the Cleavers wouldn’t

41
 have embraced it. In fact, they wouldn’t have tolerated it” and they wouldn’t have

watched the program. What made the Cleaver family so strong?

FOR MORE INFO: Read all the chapters I referenced earlier, and then think. Think

about your own family, your own Mt. Vernon. If your life was a rusted scrapheap,

then imagine the life you wished you had, the family you wished you had, and then

work at becoming that ideal family.

42
 CHAPTER 5. If you break the law you pay the penalty.

Justice is blind and no one is above it.

Justice “I deem one of the essential principles of our government… equal and exact

justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.”

Thomas Jefferson.

Since justice and mercy, crime and punishment are deep subjects, let me begin

with two simple questions.

First, have you ever fallen down?

Second, have you ever flown in an airplane?

Here’s the connection: We have two universal laws, one is the principle of gravity

and the other is the principles of aerodynamic lift. One is a downward force; the other is

an upward force. Both are valid principles. Both operate within their spheres of influence.

And both function simultaneously, even though they are opposite principles.

Justice and Mercy function the same way. Although they seem to be opposites,

they both can (and must) work together.

43
 ADD MOMENT: What I’m saying is this: if you can fall down, and if airplanes can fly,

then we can balance Mercy and Justice.

So what is Justice? It is giving each man what it legitimately due him. It involves

actions and consequences. It involves compliance with law and moral principles, such as

the 9/12 Principles and Values.

So what is Mercy? This is a bit more complex. Sometimes to be merciful involves

minimizing punishment. Sometimes it is involves withholding punishment. So it seems

that Mercy is something that is at odds with Justice, the same way that the principle of lift

is at odds with gravity.

The problem is to understand how both Justice and Mercy interact. We know this

is possible because, after all, we know that opposite principles can function. In other

words, Justice and Mercy can interact because we know that airplanes can fly.

The Roman Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas made two key statements

about Justice and Mercy. He was talking in a religious context, but the under-girding

principles apply to secular situations—such as with crime and punishment.

Said he:

“Now the work of divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy; and is
founded thereupon …” (ST I-I.21.4)

In plain English, the first quote says that Justice always presupposes Mercy. That is,

Justice and Mercy are two sides of the same coin. Think about flying. As you fly (the

Mercy), you can walk around the cabin, and still have to have your seatbelt on when

sitting (the Justice). Mercy can exist and even flourish, but she does not cancel out

44
Justice. While flying (Mercy, you can still fall down inside of the plane (Justice). Both

are in effect, with different effects.

The second quote from Aquinas explains this last idea:

“God acts mercifully, not indeed by going against His justice, but by doing
something more than justice; thus a man who pays another two hundred pieces of
money, though owing him only one hundred, does nothing against justice, but
acts liberally or mercifully.” (ST I-I.21.3)

I love how he resolved the dilemma between Mercy and Justice. He said that

Mercy does not rob Justice, but it both compliments Justice and goes beyond Justice.

And his analogy is rather commonplace: Justice is paying a bill, and Mercy is

leaving the tip.

ADD MOMENT: If you have ever eaten at a restaurant, paid the bill, and left a tip, then

you understand how Justice and Mercy both work and interact.

Some people pay the bill and leave a tip. Some pay a bill and leave no tip. Some

want to leave a tip and forget the bill—that is, just leave 15%, when they owe 100% plus

the 15%. Some people want to eat the meal, and not pay either the bill or the tip.

Aquinas’s view, I think, is the correct approach to Mercy and Justice, and also to

Crime and Punishment. Crime must be punished, but we need to figure out how we can

go beyond mere Justice and involve Mercy—all the while leaving Justice intact.

This is key. It is so easy, in the name of Mercy, to deny Justice or to shortchange

him. Parents do not discipline their children, claiming to be merciful, when all they are

doing is enabling a future criminal.

45
 This is the problem with the criminal system. We have been focusing on Mercy

to the point where were are excluding Justice. As Rush Limbaugh says, “compassion is

no substitute for justice.”

It may be due to Victor Hugo’s novel (and the later musical) Les Misérables. Jean

Valjean steals a loaf of bread to feed his family. He is caught, imprisoned, and tries to

escape several times. Finally release, he steals the candlesticks from the Bishop. The

Bishop forgives him, and then he has a change of heart, and spends the remainder of his

days doing good, helping out Fantine and Cosette, and being an upstanding citizen.

That’s a great message about human redemption. And if all prisoners were

potential Jean Valjeans, this world would be heaven on earth.

But the stern fact is that not all of our prisoners are like Jean Valjean.

Furthermore, 21st Century prisons are not the Bastille, the GULAG, and Andersonville.

They have weight rooms, medical care (including sex-change hormone therapy), cable

television, three square meals a day, with special diets to accommodate people’s religious

preferences. They even have laundry-mats, and we pay prisoners to make license plates!

Love can blind us. We get off track. We justify our so-called mercy by quoting

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself (IV.1.180-191)

46
However, we need to put this quote in context. More often then not, people omit two

lines from the quote:

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice.

“Mercy seasoning Justice.” We need to produce lift while taking the law of gravity into

account.

We also overlook Shakespeare’s other quotes that warn about abusing Mercy:

• “There is a devilish mercy in the judge” (Measure For Measure, III.i.69)

• “This would make mercy swear and play the tyrant.” (Measure For Measure,

III.ii.90)

• “Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.” ( Romeo and Juliet, III.i.169)

• “Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.” (Timon of Athens, III.v.5)

We can resolve the dilemma between Justice and Mercy by asking a simple

question: is it constructive? The bill must be paid, but do they really deserve a tip?

Maybe they deserver a rather large tip. Maybe we should just send them to the back, and

have them was dishes.

This brings us to Crime and Punishment. Some people deserve the full force of

Justice, without Mercy. Some need both Justice and Mercy. Since we are all imperfect,

and all have room for improvement, I’m not sure any needs pure Mercy. But the key

question we must ask is this—is the punishment constructive.

A WORD ABOUT CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT:

47
 First, by definition, all punishment must be cruel and unusual, or else it would not

be punishment.

Second, when people mention that death by lethal injection is cruel and unusual,

mention that Elizabeth Smart said that she was raped 3 or 4 times each day while

kidnapped. Or, over the period of 9 months, that coms to about 1,000 times. Which is

cruel or unusual—that, or a small one-second needleprick?

Third, the Constitutional provision against cruel and unusual punishment referred

not to the death penalty—the Fifth Amendment allows for death penalty after due process

—but to death by crucifixion, and the other type of horrors used by the Inquisition.

TO DO:

Answer these questions in a personal journal:

1. What is Justice? Why is it important?

2. What is Mercy? Why is it important?

3. How do Justice and Mercy work together?

4. Review the examples used in this chapter—falling down, flying, paying the bill

and leaving a tip. Form your own analogies.

5. “Mercy cannot rob justice.” Why?

6. If a child misbehaves, and we, in the name of mercy, do not punish him, what

happens to the child in the long run? How does this apply to hard-core criminals?

FOR MORE INFO: Real America, Chapter 6 “The Enemy Within,” Chapter 8

“Tolerance.” Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Chapter 1: The Reshaping and

Redefining of America, An Inconvenient Book, Chapter 13: “Gratuities: I’ve

reached my tipping Point” has Glenn’s philosophy of tipping.

48
49
 CHAPTER 6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,

but there is no guarantee of equal results.

Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness “Everyone has a natural right to choose that

vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence.”

Thomas Jefferson

The three most fundamental rights we have are life, liberty, and property. All of

these are necessary for the pursuit of happiness.

No one person has decreed this. There is not one single authority has laid down

the law, so to speak. Rather, it is the conclusion of almost 3,000 years of philosophic

inquiry.

However, there have been giants—intellectual luminaries—who have condensed

and crystallized these three ideas into a compact format. One was John Locke, in his Two

Treatises on Government. His ideas were further distilled by Thomas Jefferson in the

Declaration of Independence. Later, a French economist, by the name of Frederic Bastiat

wrote a pamphlet called The Law, which further refined and explained the ideas.

50
 ADD MOMENT: The French are not all bad, despite eating snails. They gave us such

words as “laissez-faire,” “entrepreneur,” and “soufflé.”

Here are the opening paragraphs to the pamphlet:

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life— physical,
intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the
responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may
accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And
He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of
our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use
them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property— this

is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts
from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the
contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that
caused men to make laws in the first place.

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to

lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right--from God--to defend his person, his liberty, and
his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation
of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other
two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what
is property but an extension of our faculties?

It does not get better than that. It also does not get more compact that that. It is dense

writing, but that is to be expected when dealing with heavy ideas that plumb the depths of

the human soul and the human condition.

So we have the three rights—life, liberty, and property—all of which are

necessary for the pursuit of happiness.

51
 Now, note well what the objective is. It is not to make all people equal. It is also

not to make people happy. Rather, the goal is to provide the framework for the pursuit of

happiness—the hunt, the chance, the day-to-day struggle to realize your dream. That is

what is crucial.

ADD MOMENT: Reread the Parable of the Talents, in Matthew 25:14-30 and the

Parable of the Pounds (i.e. “£,” not “#” or lbs.), in Luke 19:12-27. God gives

people different talents according to their differing abilities, and people

accordingly have different results. And this is not a bad thing.

Also, notice that there is no promise of equal results. Some people strike it rich early on.

Some people struggle to become successful. Glenn is one of these people. I began

listening to him when he was in Pittsburgh, and it has been wonderful to see him become

so successful.

But he started out small. It started with the bakery in Mt. Vernon. Then he got

into radio. He bounced around, became an alcoholic, and was divorced.

Then things changed. He found a great girl. He cleaned up his act and sobered up,

and then took control of his life, and got religion (Principle 2). We all should study his

model of success.

At the same time, there are plenty of other less successful DJs and talk show

hosts. Sean Hannity’s cable news show has been successful; so has Bill O’Reilly’s. But

Dr. Laura’s and Rush Limbaugh’s television careers have not been successful.

This is not a bad thing. Failure can be a great teacher. You learn where your

talents are and where your talents are. This allows you to focus on what you do best

(called your “comparative advantage”), and not waste time doing ineffective things.

52
 There is also a greater concern. Sometimes it is impossible to make all things

equal. Did You ever see that episode of The Twilight Zone where the young girl gets the

facelift, and then she looks just like everyone else (“Number 12 Looks Just Like You”)?

That is a bland sameness. There is no difference to spice things up.

Also, some things are beyond are capacity to equalize. For example, I have three

friends of mine who have been kidnapped. Do we kidnap everyone to make things fair?

I’m allergic to dogs. Do we commit a vast canine genocide so that I have a fair chance as

everyone else? And what would we do about the seeing-eye dogs?

Thomas Sowell calls this “the quest for cosmic justice” (Justice being Principle

5). We want to make things absolutely fair for everyone. But when we try, we damage

things in the process.

You may have tried this argument on someone. Suppose they got a 95 on a test.

And then suppose he professor said, “Look, it’s unfair you did so well. You have so

many gifts and abilities, and you worked hard. So what I’m going to do is take 30 points

off of your grade, and then give to your schlub classmate who was partying hard and got

a 35 on the test. Now you will both have 65, and that will be fair?”

Now suppose this is medical school.

You see what I mean when we try to make things fair. It is a case of Mercy

robbing Justice, and people being hurt as we chase mirages.

And people are what matter.

A Final Word about competition:

53
 Implicit with the free-enterprise system and free-markets is the principle of

competition. Do not confuse “competition” with “competitiveness.” Competitiveness is a

character flaw. C. S Lewis explained:

“Pride is essentially competitive-is competitive by its very nature-while the other

vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of
having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that
people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They
are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If every one
else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be
proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being
above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.” (Mere
Christianity)

Competition, however, is an inherent property in the universe. It exists for several

reasons. One, because there are opposites: up is opposed to down, left is opposed to right,

light is opposed to dark.

Second, competition is assonated with the fact that there are a limited number of

things in the world, with alternative uses. We have a certain umber of cows on the planet,

and so we have a limited quantity of milk—does the milk go to drinking, or for cheese, or

for cottage cheese, or for cream, or for ice cream, and so forth. These alternative uses,

like left and right, are in competition with each other.

But there is, of necessity, no malice involved—although there can be. The malice,

or the pride, or the competitiveness, is incidental to the natural property. It is something

that we, as flawed human beings, bring to the situation.

We can change how competitive (or prideful) we are, but we cannot change this

natural property. It would be like trying to outlaw gravity.

TO DO:

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 1. Read the Parable of the Talents in the New Testament. Why does God give

different people different talents? Why did the Master take the one talent from the

slothful (lazy) servant and give it to the one with the most talents? Was this fair?

Was this constructive?

2. Review the analogy of the test and transferring points from a good student to a

bad student. What would this do to the good student? What about the bad student?

Is the bad student really learning, if we inflate the grades?

3. Who is competent enough to judge what is fair and what is unfair?

4. I am allergic to dogs. Is that fair? Or is that something I have to learn to live with

and work around? How could we make things fair for me, without violating the

rights of dog-lovers and harming canines at large?

FOR MORE INFO: Read The Real America, Chapter 3: “Celebrities in America,”

especially about “immiseration,” and Chapter 6, “ The Enemy Within,” An

Inconvenient Book, Chapter 6, “The Income Gap: The Rich are Getting Richer,

Good for Them,” Chapter 17: “Minimum Wage, Maximum Politics,” Chapter 22:

“Illegal Immigration” Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Chapter II: Money: The Real

Opiate Of The Masses, and Arguing With Idiots, Chapter 5 “Unions,” Chapter 6:

“Illegal Immigration,” Chapter 8: “Owing A Home,” and Chapter 9: “Economics

101.” Chapter 11: Universal Health Care: Why A Papercut May Soon Be Fatal”

deals with misguided equalization—or sameness—in healthcare.

55
 CHAPTER 7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to.

Government cannot force me to be charitable.

Charity “It is not everyone who asketh that deserveth charity; all however, are

worth of the inquiry or the deserving may suffer.” George Washington

In one word, this chapter is about control. Specifically, who makes the decisions

about how we use our lives, our liberties, and our property, and who defines happiness.

Do we as free individuals make those decisions, or are they made by faceless bureaucrats

in the Washington DC bunkers?

In The 5,000 Year Leap, Skousen makes the point that the Founders were not so

much concerned about the left-right dichotomy. After all, we need both wings of thought

so that the American Eagle can fly a steady course. Rather, their concern was about the

centralization of power. The diagram he uses is of a three-headed eagle, which you saw

adapted on pages 29-30 of Arguing With Idiots.

ADD MOMENT: Glenn doesn’t make any money off of The 5,000 Year Leap. Neither

do I. 56
 When the Constitutional Convention adjourned, they included a cover letter to

the US Constitution which explained this very principle. It reads:

Sir,

We have now the honor to submit to the consideration of the United States in
Congress assembled, that Constitution which has appeared to us the most
advisable.

The friends of our country have long seen and desired, that the power of making
war, peace, and treaties, that of levying money and regulating commerce, and the
correspondent executive and judicial authorities should be fully and effectually
vested in the general government of the Union: But the impropriety of delegating
such extensive trust to one body of men is evident -- Hence results the necessity of
a different organization.

It is obviously impractical in the federal government of these states, to secure all

rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and
safety of all: Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to
preserve the rest. The magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation
and circumstances, as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to
draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and
those which may be reserved; and on the present occasion this difficulty was
increased by a difference among the several states as to their situation, extent,
habits, and particular interests.

In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which
appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of
our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our
national existence. This important consideration, seriously and deeply impressed
on our minds, led each state in the Convention to be less rigid on points of
inferior magnitude, than might have been otherwise expected; and thus the
Constitution, which we now present, is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that
mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation
rendered indispensable.

That it will meet the full and entire approbation of every state is not perhaps to be
expected; but each will doubtless consider that had her interest been alone
consulted, the consequences might have been particularly disagreeable or
injurious to others; that it is liable to as few exceptions as could reasonably have
been expected, we hope and believe; that it may promote the lasting welfare of
that country so dear to us all, and secure her freedom and happiness, is our most
ardent wish.

57
 With great respect, We have the honor to be, Sir, Your Excellency's most obedient
and humble servants,

George Washington, President By unanimous Order of the Convention.

That is the question: How much power do we retain as citizens? What powers do

we delegate to the states, and what powers do we delegate to the federal government?

It is not an easy question to answer. We started with the Continental Congress,

then reorganized under the Articles of Confederation, and then finally—third time’s the

charm—formed a more perfect union with our currant Constitution, with a stronger

centralized government.

However, even the Constitution was not perfect. As I explained in Chapter 4, we

amended the Constitution with the Bill of Rights to reign in the government from being

too centralized. We did not, nor should we, trust government with too much power.

James Madison, wring in the Federalist Papers, said:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government

are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are
numerous and indefinite.”

“The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace,

negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for
the most part, be connected.”

“ The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in
the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the
people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
(Federalist 45)

This is not to say that decentralizing power to the states will solve all problems, but given

the current state of affairs, it is a step in the right direction.

II

58
 “I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government

cannot force me to be charitable.”

This principle involves two sub-principles: property rights (“I work hard for

what I have”) and coercive compassion (Government cannot force me to be charitable”).

Property rights were explained in the previous chapter. In order for property rights

to be substantive rights, we individuals must be sovereign. The bias must be in favor of

the people—the individuals, not government. In socialism, the government has direct

control over property; in the Soviet Union this was done by the commissars. In fascism,

the government has indirect control over property, through government bureaus, and so

forth. Either way, both are forms of statism (or governmentalism), since, when all is said

and done, the government is really calling the shots—regardless of the figureheads.

The second sub-principle, coercive compassion, deserves some explaining.

At its essence, government is force: it is capital force; it is coercive force. That is

why government has police, pepper spray, rifles, tanks, atomic bombs, ballistic

submarines, aircraft carriers, and two divisions of Airborne—82nd and 101st. All of these

things exist for one purpose—to force people into compliance. Or to kill them, if they fail

to comply.

ADD MOMENT: Yes, government is about force—just talk to Udei, Quisei, and Sadam

Hussein.

And in some extreme cases, it goes beyond that. Sometimes government is a false

god.

59
 The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (not the tiger) wrote along book on

government called Leviathan (not the movie with Peter Weller). His idea was that

government should over-awe citizens to keep them in line.

In one telling passage, he wrote about the civil compact people make, for mutual

protection. He then said:

“This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a

COMMONWEALTH, in Latin CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great
LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal God, to which
wee owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defense. For by this Authority,
given him by every particular man in the Common-Wealth, he hath the use of so
much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is enabled
to form the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutual aid against their
enemies abroad.” (Leviathan)

I hope we have this idea clear: Hobbes said that government was to be an object of

“power,” “strength,” and “terror.” It was to frighten people into submission.

And I hope we are clear that he was dead wrong.

You cannot use this force—this brutal force and terror—transform people into

sweet and loving people.

I used to work with a woman. She was one of those grumpy people whose forever

frown rubbed off onto her coworkers. But here is the question: what type of thumbscrews

could I use on her to make her a more pleasant person? Or what rack or iron maiden

could I put her in to make her smile more? Would putting on a chain gang change her

attitude?

No.

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 That is why government-sponsored, government forced coercive compassion

fails. The welfare system has failed. Seventy years of experience, with multiple

generation welfare recipients, prove this.

Keep in mind that we are not advocating anarchy. James Madison affirmed, “If

men were angels, no government would be necessary” (Federalist 51). Alexander

Hamilton wrote, “Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of

men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint” (Federalist

15). There is a legitimate place and sphere for both the state and the federal government.

Our concern is with the Nanny State.

What is the alternative to the Nanny State? How can we slay the false god of the

Leviathan Government? Simple: the free market.

ADD MOMENT: Get the terminology down right. The essence of the American system

is not capital—capitalist being the Marxist term for it—but freedom. Use free market,

free choice, or the free enterprise system. Or the French word, laissez-faire, which,

roughly translated, means “Get off our backs!”

That is the difference between the two systems: centralized versus localized;

coercive versus persuasive; mandatory versus voluntary. One has people as slaves to the

state and the bureaucrats, the other has a community of freemen, answerable to

themselves and to God.

III

Wrote Glenn:

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 “Socialism, in many ways, is exactly the way we should live, except I should be
able freely to give my money to others. I shouldn’t have my money forcibly taken
from me and given to the government, so they can decide what should be done
with it.”

“In the Real America, we would all make as much money as we could possibly
make, but then we’d only take what we need, and we’d share the rest of it.
Government can’t do that. Only God can do that. Only spirituality can do that.”
“But socialism robs people of choice. And that is why socialism is evil. …”

“Compassion shouldn’t come from the government. In the Real America,

compassion will come from the heart. (The Real America, 114, 116)

IV

Ronald Reagan:

“Communism works only in two places: heaven, where they don’t need it, and
hell, where they’ve already got it.”

We need to bone-up on Adam Smith.

ADD MOMENT: If you have not read both Wealth of Nations and Theory of

Moral Sentiments, then you have no right to complain; you opinions are uninformed!

He is most famous for his long book Wealth of Nations. But before he wrote his

economic treatise, he wrote another book called Theory of Moral Sentiments.

In this second book there is a chapter called “Of the corruption of our moral

sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and

to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition.”

Here is that chapter’s first paragraph:

62
 “This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful,
and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition,
though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and
the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of
the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often
regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and
virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects,
is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the
complaint of moralists in all ages.”

That paragraph kills all the clichés. He is certainly not the Greedy Capitalist Swine that

people make him out to be, right?

In Wealth of Nations, he wrote:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in
some contrivance to raise prices.”

And:

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of
which the effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has
no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in finding out
expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses,
therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and
ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”

There is so much to Adam Smith.

In fact, he was a behind-the-scenes Founding Father. Before America was founded,

several revolutions happened.

• Political: The Magna Carta.

• Religious: The Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation.

• Artistic: Da Vinci and Shakespeare.

• Scientific: The Enlightenment, Isaac Newton and Galileo.

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 Adam Smith, for his part, spearheaded the economic and financial revolution in

America. It is no coincidence that Wealth of Nations was published the same year as

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence— all in 1776.

The concluding argument I have is simple: Look at the countries that were formed

with Adam Smith economics: The United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand,

and Australia. They are the most prosperous nations on the planet.

TO DO:

1. Why is it important to be charitable?

2. Give to a reputable charity.

3. Volunteer somewhere.

4. Think back when your were a child, and your parents made you share

something. How did you feel? Was it right or wrong of them to do that? Is

government our Mommy and Daddy?

5. Can there be a conflict of interest between a politician and his or her

charitable organizations?

6. Since there are so many charities out there, how does any one politician know

which one is best for our dollar?

FOR MORE INFO: Bone up on free-enterprise by reviewing Real America, Chapter 9

“Business: The Engine of America,” An Inconvenient Book, Chapter 6: “The Income

Gap: The Rich Get Richer, Good for Them,” Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Chapter II:

Money: The Real Opiate Of The Masses, Chapter III: The Political Weapon Of Choice:

The US Tax Code, and Arguing With Idiots, Chapters 1: “In Defense of Capitalism” and

Chapter 9 “Economics 101.” 64

65
 CHAPTER 8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share

my personal opinion.

On your right to disagree “In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the

voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or more properly without

thinking.”

George Washington

Reread the First Amendment:

“1Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or

prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of
the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances.”

These provisos, these limitations on government were included for a reason.

Government—really, the politicians and bureaucrats who run government—has a

tendency to amass power, at the expense of the everyday citizen.

When government gets too big, too oppressive, too tyrannical, then there needs to

be a mechanism, a means by which the everyday citizen can stop the oppression, and do

it in a peaceable, orderly, and rational manner.

66
 The last two clauses, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to

petition the Government for a redress of grievances” serve just that purpose. We as

citizens, can gather, debate, reason, and then send these suggestions, or even demands, to

Congress and the President.

This right includes the venerable tradition of writing your congressman, which

now involves email, voicemail, Facebook, and Twitter. But it also includes the Tea

Parties and the 9/12 Rally in 2009. Despised and ridiculed by the Mainstream Media,

these gathering were both a lawful and a moral exercising of our constitutional rights.

Like Nixon’s resignation, Clinton’s impeachment, and Gov. Davis’s recall, these were

not blotches and evidence that America had failed, or that she was broken—both clichéd

expressions. Rather, they were evidences that America not only worked, but that it was

working exactly as intended.

Pardon a personal digression. For two years, I served a mission in Portugal. One

thing I found myself explaining to people (in addition to my faith) was the nature of

America. In particular, I explained Watergate.

For me, Watergate was a normal thing. The Founders include provisos for

removing a president. But other countries do not have such a mechanism. The dictator

rewrites the constitution at whim to suit his whims.

I hope we have a sense of what a rare thing America is, and that we are energized

in doing all we can to preserve her.

II

We must have respect for government. We must respect office. But we must

remember that the office holders are fallible men and woman, just like we are.

67
 James Madison explained:

“[W]hat is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern
men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the

great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the
governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the
people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has
taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” (Federalist 51)

Humans are imperfect, and when they become officeholders, the damage they can

do is exponentially compounded. That is why government is structured the way it is: We

have local, state, and federal offices—this is the federal relationship of powers. Then the

government is split into three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial. This is

separations of powers.

By design, power is diffused. This prevented the abuse of the concentration of

power, and therefore tyranny.

James Madison explained:

“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in
the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department
the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments
of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be
made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to
counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the
constitutional rights of the place. …”

“This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better
motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as
well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate
distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the
several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that
the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.
These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the
supreme powers of the State.” ( Federalist 51).

68
Government was intentionally designed to create rivalries (or competition) among

branches and levels, much like two thieves guarding a treasure.. These are some of the

“auxiliary precautions” that Madison spoke about.

Even so, these are not enough.

III

There is still a third danger: faction. The best essay on factions is, bar none, the

10th Federalist Paper. It is public domain and online in several locations, so I’ll only

summarize it here.

James Madison, who wrote the 10th Federalist, explained

“By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority

or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse
of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the
permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Nowadays we would call factions “special-interest groups.” But it can go beyond that—
any group of people combined or organized to promote their narrow interest at he
expense of the whole country.
George Washington was ferociously opposed to such groups—these combinations
or factions or divisions within the body politic.
In his farewell address, he said:
“All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations,
under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control,
counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted
authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.”

“They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to

put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a
small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to
the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the
mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the
organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and
modified by mutual interests.”

69
 “However combinations or associations of the above description may now and
then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to
become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will
be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the
reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted
them to unjust dominion.”

That is the problem. Since faction—the spirit egotistical partisanship—is part of

human nature, and a negative side effect of liberty, we really cannot control its cause. We

can, however, manage the effects of faction.

We do this two ways. If the faction is in the minority (not racial or ethic

minorities, but a political minority not having enough seats in Congress), the majority can

stop the power of an out-of-control combination of special-interest groups.

If the faction is in the majority, then what we do is to encourage other smaller

parties to stop them.

ADD MOMENT: According to Madison, The McCain-Feingold solution of limiting

campaign spending is wrong. Madison would say, “Make it easier to spend more

money.” Another great idea from “Dead White Males”!

What Madison is saying that we a large republic, with more people speaking,

more rallies, more Tea Parties, and easier access to the public platform.

ADD MOMENT: Yes, Madison would love the Internet, want to keep it unregulated and

certainly untaxed, and, no, he would not support the misnamed Fairness Doctrine.

70
 Thus, our government is structured in a way to prevent combinations of special-

interest groups, or factions, from destroying our liberty.

IV

Take a quick breather, and review the chapter’s points:

1. We as citizens retain the right of free speech, assembly, and the right to petition

our government for a redress of resistances (i.e. we can complain to them)

because they are as mortal and fallible as we are.

2. Our government is structured a way to compensate for normal human

shortcomings.

3. We have the separation of powers and the federal relationships intentionally in

place to diffuse power, since, as Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute

power corrupts absolutely.”

ADD MOMENT: But Acton forgot to mention that power also seduces. And many a

man has fallen for her gaudy charms.

4. Biennial elections are also another structural way we limit government power.

5. There is also the danger of faction (combinations of special-interest groups) that

can overrun the government. We control factions by the structure of government,

and also by making it easier for all voices to be heard at the public platform.

There you have it—the whole structure of government presupposes that power will be

abused.

Got it?

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 V

The above reasons are why we not only have a right, but a need to speak up, if our

conscious so dictates. Government is force—both coercive and capital. And when we

surrender power—really, it is a temporary lending of power—we must be eternally

vigilant about how that lent power is used.

Free speech is how we express our approval or disapproval of government. We

elected them, so we own them. They do not own us. It is crucial that we speak up for

America when she is right and against America when she is wrong.

And when she is wrong, criticizing government is our patriotic duty.

The Founders intended it to be this way.

TO DO:

1. Why is the right to free speech in the Constitution? How it a crucial part of the

political process?

2. Is there a difference between criticizing a politician and critiquing?

3. Should politicians be immune from constructive criticism?

4. How is the best way to present a critique to a person?

5. When was the last time you contacted your elected officials—local, state, and

federal?

6. Jung disagreed with Freud, Aristotle disagreed with Plato, and Einstein disagreed

with Newton, yet science is better for these disagreements. How does this apply to

political questions?

72
FOR MORE INFO: Real America, Chapter 4 “Everything You Need to Know About

Partisan Politics,” Chapter 7 “Jesse Jackson Is Yasser Arafat,” Chapter 8 “Tolerance.”

An Inconvenient Book, Chapter 9: “Political Games: America’s on a Loosing Streak,”

Chapter 11: “Media bias: An All-New Fairness Doctrine,” Chapter 12: “You Can’t

Say That!: The Politics of Correctness, Chapter 19: “Opinion Polls: Our Country’s

Real Leader.” Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Chapter IV: The Perks and Privileges of

the Political Class.

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 CHAPTER 9.The government works for me.

I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Who works for whom? “I consider the people who constitute a society or a nation

as the source of all authority in that nation.” Thomas Jefferson

This principle is really the icing on the cake—the cherry on the top of all the

principles. It gets to the heart of the matter: Not only do we surround them, we also

control them.

Glenn wrote:

“Take it from a recovering alcoholic and drug user, cocaine ain’t the big lie. The
big lie is that ‘You don’t matter.’”

“You do make a difference. Every single person makes a difference.” (The Real
America, 24)

We do matter.

Every two years we have an election—the House of Representatives comes up for

reelection every two years, the president every four years, the senate every six years.

We, as human spirits and free humans, have the power to send them to state house

and to Washington D.C. We also have the power to send them packing. And in extreme

cases we can recall, impeach, and remove from office.

All of the previous eight principles seem to work up to this 9th one. On the

morning of every election—both general and primary elections—we should read this

principles and repeat it several times: “The government works for me. I do not answer to

them, they answer to me.” “The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they

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answer to me.” “The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to

me.”

Take back the PTA. Take back the city halls. Take back the state assemblies and

senates. Take back Congress. Take back the White House. Take back The Supreme Court

by taking back the White House and the Senate.

This is our country. We surround them. We control them

ONE FINAL NOTE:

One of the reasons why we keep sending the same schlubs back is that they keep

running, and we do not have qualified opposition. If you have the means, the grit, the

personality, and most importantly the vision of the 9/12 Principles and Values, and you

believe that “WE SURROUND THEM,” then you need to run for office.

Sarah Palin and Ronald Reagan are not the only citizen-politicians. You can be

one, too. We need you.

TO DO:

1. The Constitution begins “We The People” in large letters. Why? And what doe

these words mean?

2. Reread the Declaration of Independence. Why is it important to know that

a. Rights are a gift from God?

b. Government exists to protect these rights?

c. We have a right to change government, if it becomes oppressive?

3. Do we need a new constitution, or do we need to elect better people?

4. Is it enough to complain about politics, or do we need to do more?

FOR MORE INFO: Real America, Chapter 11 “The Flame That Burns in the Real

America,” and Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Chapter VI: Is It A Rising or a

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Setting Sun?
76
 INTERMISSION: VALUES

Nietzsche—the Darth Maul of philosophers—pointed out that values are not

necessarily absolutes. They can “transvalued” or “revalued” or “reevaluated,” and

ultimately changed or ignored. So in speaking about values, our emphasis must be on

correct values and true principles.

ADD MOMENT: While Nietzsche talked tough, and did serve in the army and

was wounded, he got queasy as the sight of blood. Gürly-männ! (See The Story of

Philosophy, 406)

TO DO:

Peter Kreeft observed: “If there were permanent moral truths, that would mean

that morality is no longer about nice, warm, fuzzy, vague, soft, negotiable things called

‘values,’ but about hard, unyielding, uncompromising, uncomfortable, nonnegotiable

things called ‘laws’.” (C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium, 43)

1. What is a principle? What is a value? Are there incorrect principles and incorrect

values?

2. Are values relative? If so, why? If not, why?

3. What do you value that you shouldn’t value? That you should value?

4. What is the difference between a value having a context and a value being

relative? Such as the value of not stealing, and the need for feeding a hungry

family? If your family is hungry, why are you stealing food when you can go to

your extended family, your church, or the welfare office to get food?

5. What are the values that made America great? What are the values that weaken

America?

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6. If George Washington (or any other Founding Father) were to come back, what

would they say about the current state of affairs?

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 CHAPTER 10: Honesty

Do you remember the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf? He

was one of Saddam Hussein’s (R.I.P.) henchman, job during the Iraq Invasion was to go

on television each night and to tell the world that, no, there are no Americans in Iraq, and

no, there are no tanks within our borders.

That is how he got the nicknames of Baghdad Bob and Comical Ali.

ADD MOMENT: ‘Comical Ali’ was pun on another one of Hussein’s henchman,

Chemical Ali. Hussein also had a lady scientist named Dr. Germ. It sounds like

Hussein was imitating Lex Luthor’s Legion Of Doom!

Although General Sherman said that war was hell, Baghdad Bob’s absurd antics and

speeches brought a lighter side to the dim combat.

He also got me thinking. What would it be like to be married to Baghdad Bob?

“Yes, honey, I love you” To have him as a coworker? “I’ll have it done in 15 minutes—

honest!” To have him as your church leader, mayor, or police officer? “A break in? I’m

on my way—really!”

What if we all were like Baghdad Bob? What if we just said whatever came to

mind, regardless of whether it was true or not? What if we all tried to slide by telling

“little white lies”?

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 The sad thing is that we do. We call in sick when we want to goof off. We say we

forgot when we really didn’t. You get the idea. We’ve all done it.

Of course, there are appropriate times not to be fully honest. Once case is with

state security and spies. Another is the case of Oscar Schindler, who lied to the Nazis in

order to protect Jews. A third case may be with planning a surprise birthday party. We all

get the idea, and we all understand these appropriate and common-sense exceptions.

But for the most part, and for day-to-day living, these obvious exceptions do not

apply.

ADD MOMENT: Spying on a surprise birthday party where they are hiding Jews for

state security—how often does that happen?

More often than not, our honesty issues are more common place:

• Were you really working late, or were you out with your friends

drinking/shopping/stealing hubcaps?

• Were you really working at work, or were you googling porn?

• “But officer, the light wasn’t read it was … um … pink!”

• “This is the last time I’ll do this—for reals!”

That last one takes it home. We need to be honest with others. But we also need to be

honest with ourselves. There is a reason why the first of the Twelve Steps involves being

honest with one’s self. It is only until we are honest that we can make progress in

changing who we are and also changing the world.

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 There’s a saying that big things come in small packages. Honesty is one of these

big things that comes in a small package. And it can be summed up in three words:

“Tell the truth!”

TO DO:

1. What would it be like to be married to Baghdad Bob?

2. Why did he say the things that he said? Did he get away with it?

3. What is the difference between lying on your tax form and lying to Nazis to

protect Jews?

4. Did you give an honest day’s work today?

5. Are you honest with yourself?

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 CHAPTER 11: Reverence

Throughout this book we have mentioned God. As Principle 2 reads, we must

have faith in God, and He must be the center of our lives. But as I have written, I have

not advocated a specific denomination, tenet, or dogma. That is something each of us

must find out for ourselves.

ADD MOMENT: It may be a coincidence, maybe not, but I am writing this chapter on

Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

But the reason why we have mention God is that we need this higher power to

shape, drive, and transform our lives. We mention God for the same reason Twelve Step

Programs focus on faith in God. In fact, the 9/12 Principles and Values can be seen as a

type of Twelve Step Program, or patriotic 7 Habits.

In addition to claiming this higher power, we also need reverence. This is the

feeling of awe, splendor, respect, and the sense of holiness that comes when we

acknowledge the majesty of a Higher Being.

It is crucial to so acknowledge God as a Higher Being. It reminds us of our

smallness.

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 Ronald Reagan affirmed:

“We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our
government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're
sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.”
(Remarks at an Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Dallas, Texas August 23, 1984)

Notice how this one virtue, reverence, leads to other virtues: humility and

tolerance.

Yes, religion has been abused. But secularism can also be equally abusive—just

look at the body counts of the world-wide godless Communist movement. And when

religion get abused—from Jonestown and the Hale-Bopp cults to inquisition and Salem

With Hunts, we can be assured that one key component was the lack of reverence.

Reverence to God leads to reverence of others, since we are all made in God’s

image. We all have a divine spark and have a divine imprint on our souls.

It is this divine spark that is in all of us that makes America great and is the

foundation for human rights.

TO DO:

1. What does the word “reverence” mean?

2. How does reverence for God carry over into reverence for others?

3. Is reverence more than being quiet?

4. Why does God keep popping up in this discussion about America?

5. BONUS: God is holy. Explain.

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 CHAPTER 12: Hope

Anciently, faith, hope, and charity (or love), were seen as three interlocking

virtues or graces. Principle 2 is about faith. Charity is one of the 9/12 Values, and is

associated with Principle 7. Hope, the middle virtue, is like charity and is her own 9/12

Value.

As a middle value between faith and charity, hope has elements of both: in having

faith, we hope certain things will happen. We give to charity in hopes of helping a person

out.

The core idea, then, is of a reconnoitering scout that goes ahead of the where the

action is, and beacons us on to higher ground and greener pastures. It is the type of

excitement (and oft-times giddiness) that engaged-to-be-married couples have. They are

in anticipation of the exciting day, and can barely contain themselves.

Since America is good (Principle 1), we have faith in America. We also can have

hope in America. We have seen darker days—frigid Valley Forge, the White House

burned to the ground during the War of 1812, the Civil War that ripped both this country

and families in half, and 9/11.

But we survived those days. And we prospered.

We must hope that we can stand up to today’s trial. We must see, not with rose-

colored glasses, but with our hearts—our hearts burning with love of county—the

Shining City On A Hill that we must become.

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 Whenever we sing these words, “O beautiful, for patriot’s dream, which sees

beyond the years,” we must mean it. We must also realize the part we play in bring about

the Beautiful Patriot’s Dream. The 9/12 Principles and Values will help us make that

dream come true.

TO DO:

1. What is hope? What do you hope for?

2. How does hope relate to faith and charity, and the rest of the 9/12 Principles and

Values?

3. How does hope affect our outlook on things?

4. How does hope affect the way we vote?

5. Compassion has been politicized. Can hope also be politicized?

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 CHAPTER 13: Thrift

Thrift. A painful word. It reminds us that on the money we make, with the bills

we pay, the children we support, the charities we help out, and the taxes that are extracted

like a pound of flesh form our pocketbooks, that we cannot have it all.

Thrift is a painful word. It is like another painful word: diet.

But if we stop and think about it, both “thrift” and “diet” are also helpful words—

despite being painful.

Let me explain the connection.

Have you ever met anyone who goes on and off of diets? A new month, a new

diet type of person? Then have you ever met anyone who—when you stop and talk to

them—let this idea come out: they want to go on a diet for a month or three, and then be

able to eat anything they want for the rest of their lives?

You know the people I’m talking about. They could be you.

And the same principle applies to thrift. There are some people who want to go on

a budget for one month, or who want to save haphazardly, and then be left alone to spend

what they want on whatever they want for the rest of their lives.

Dieting doesn’t work that way. Neither does money.

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 Benjamin Franklin had several keen insights to thriftiness, or what he called

frugality.

ADD MOMENT: Benjamin Franklin was an expert on thrift. That is why he is on the

$100 bill and you are not.

He taught that frugality and industry would free him from his personal debt, and would

produce affluence and independence. He also said that debt “exposes a man to

confinement, and a species of slavery to his creditors.” And he also affirmed that “it

being more difficult for a man in want, to act always honestly … [because] it is hard for

an empty sack to stand up-right”

We must master our money. We must get a written budget, and live on or under a

budget. We must get past the Pavlovian “see it, buy it” that we are all too conditioned to

follow.

Glenn speaks of “Values and Value.” What he means is that we have a clear set of

priorities—saving for the future, pay the bill on time, pay of the credit cards—and that

these priorities shape our finances and purchasing decisions. We are in control when we

have a sense of value, like the 9/12 Values.

TO DO:

1. Are you living on a written budget?

2. Review you purchases. How many of them were impulse purchases?

3. Why are values and value important?

4. Why is thrift the key to prosperity?

5. Do you have a $1,000 emergency fund, and a reserve 3 to 6 months of living

expenses?

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6. If you were snowed-in for a week without power, could you survive with what

you have in your house?

7. Considering the customer service you get at the DMV and the IRS, do you really

want to rely upon the government to feed you in an emergency?

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 CHAPTER 14: Humility

We’ve all heard that old joke about humility. But do you know who the first

person was to crack that joke? Benjamin Franklin.

Earlier I mentioned Benjamin Franklin’s plan for self-improvement. One of the

virtues he tried to develop was humility. He aimed to imitate Socrates and Jesus.

But he explained that this was a difficult virtue to develop:

“In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as
pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as
one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself;
you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I
had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

There you have it. Franklin was the first person to joke about being proud of your

humility.

But did you catch the in-between stuff? “Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it

down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and

then peep out and show itself.”

Our difficulty in being humble is one of the reason why it is a 9/12 Value.

America cannot be good and we cannot center our lives on God if we are not humble. We

cannot be charitable if we are constantly thinking of ourselves first.

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 Traditionally, pride has been categorized as one the Seven Deadly Sins. The

Apocrypha teaches: “For pride is the beginning of sin, and he that hath it shall pour out

abomination” (Sirach 10:13).

ADD MOMENT: You want a good icebreaker with your priest, rabbi or imam? Go up

to him and ask him about the Apocrypha.

This is heavy stuff. And it is sobering to think that one sin, pride, triggers all other

vices. C. Lewis wrote:

“It is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every
family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together:
you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people
or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity—it is enmity.”

He explained that the antidote to pride was humility. But he also added a caution:

“If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The
first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing
whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you
are very conceited indeed.” (Mere Christianity)

That is where humility comes in. It interacts with all of the other values. Before

we can center our lives on God, we must be humble. Before we can give to charity, we

must be humble. Before we can be honest, we must be humble.

Don’t get me wrong. To be humble is not to be a pushover or a doormat. Humility

is the key to the stronger virtues, such as thrift, hard work, and courage. Think of the

idealized Knight In Shining Armor. He lived simply. He went about doing good—

rescuing damsels in distress, slaying dragons, stopping evil wizard and corrupt tax

collectors.

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 But there was always a sense of humility about him. He did not take advantage of

other’s goodness. He took food and shelter, but no rewards. The quest for the Holy Grail

was an example of humility in action. Sir Galahad sacrificed personal comfort, self-

fulfillment, potential bodily harm, and the best years of his life to find the Holy Grail. He

meekly submitted to his call, and worked at it.

This should not seem to alien to us. Our American soldiers do the same thing.

Except their holy grail is the American Flag and freedoms, values and principles that it

represents.

We are all knights in shining armor. We are all American Soldiers. We all have a

mission to do and a quest to accomplish. Our power is in our humility.

TO DO:

1. Why is “pride is the beginning of sin”?

2. The proud seem to get their way all the time. Why should we be humble?

3. What exactly does a humble person do, day-to-day?

4. How is humility powerful? How is pride weakness?

5. Think of the last time you were proud. What would you do differently?

6. Benjamin Franklin cited Jesus Christ and Socrates as exemplars of humility. But

both of them stood up to the corrupt powers of their day—“repent ye, repent ye!”

How can we be humble as we challenge corruption and evil in our day?

7. Both Socrates and Stalin had strong wills and strong convictions, but how are

Socrates and Stalin different?

8. What changes do you need to make in yourself to become humble?

9. What does this saying mean, “The meek shall inherit the earth”?

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 CHAPTER 15. Charity

This topic, being such an important one, is divided into two sections.

In one sense of the word, charity refers to almsgiving, or “giving to charity.”

Principle 7 strongly affirms that we, not government, should make decisions regarding

charitable donations and other forms of almsgiving. We mush and should make these

decisions; they should not be made by bureaucratic lapdogs on the leash of various

special-interest groups.

ADD MOMENT: Here is the scoop: special-interest groups milk the government for

contributions, and use the IRS as a means of fundraising. Got it?

That is the key concern we have with government charities—they are not

charitable because the contributions are coerced, and voluntary.

So, then, how do we feed the poor, clothe the naked, and heal the sick? Simple,

we do it how we used to do it before the creation of the Welfare State. We would rely

upon private donations, churches, and benevolent societies to carry out the work

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 But think about the premise of the question. Here is the logic: if government

doesn’t do X (in this case feed the poor), then it will not get done.

The argument (and yes, this is another “Argument With Idiots”) assumes that if

government is not doing everything, then nothing will get done. Or, if it gets done, it will

be done in a slipshod or hazardous manner that kills species, discriminates against

minorities, women, and children, increases the ozone hole, lets babies dies …. You get

the idea.

Remember the quote from Bastiat in chapter 6.

“Life, faculties, production--in other words, individuality, liberty, property -- …

these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.
[They] do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact
that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws
in the first place.”

There are many things that are prior to, or more important and have precedence, over the

state. You are mare important that the state. Your family is more important that the state.

Natural and human rights are also more important than the state. That is why we

created the Bill of Rights in the first place—not to limit people, but to limit government.

“Congress shall make no law ….”

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 ADD MOMENT: In this one case, California got it right. Their constitution begins with

this preamble, “We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for

our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this

Constitution,” and then next comes Article I, which is the Declaration of Rights. Follow

the logic: The most important things are natural, human rights, and the whole

mechanism of government exits to preserve those rights.

Part of the human right of liberty include the liberty to use our property (another

human right) as we see fit, included where and when we give our charitable

contributions.

Thus, charitable giving to whom we like, when we like, without government

diddlefritzing, is a human right.

II

“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to
be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13: 3)

At the beginning of the chapter, I mentioned that in one sense of the word, charity

referred to almsgiving. This part of the chapter will discuss a more ancient sense of the

word.

Charity is not only what you do—“give to charity”—but charity is also what you

are—“being a charitable person.” It’s an old word that really meant “beloved” or

“especially precious.” In the King James Version of the Bible, this word “charity” was

used as the English equivalent of the Greek word agape. This Greek word agape was a

technical word that referred to the ultimate, divine, supernal form of Super-Love that was

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the highest a man or God could have. It is associated with what we call “platonic love,”

but really went beyond how we in the 21st century understand that word.

To best understand this word, we have two sources. One is Plato’s dialogue called

Symposium, which may be were the expression “platonic love” comes from.

The other source is St. Paul’s Psalm of Love, found in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind;

charity envieth not
charity vaunteth not itself,
is not puffed up
doth not behave itself unseemly
seeketh not her own,
is not easily provoked,
thinketh no evil;
rejoiceth not in iniquity,
but rejoiceth in the truth;
beareth all things,
believeth all things,
hopeth all things,
endureth all things.

That gets to the heart of the matter, and to the central core of the 9/12 Principles and

Values. Yes, there is law and order. Yes, mercy cannot rob justice. Yes, crime must be

followed by punishment. But there also this power of Divine Super Love, this “charity”

that motives us to be charitable citizens and charitable human beings.

As St. Paul wrote, without this charity, without this Divine Super Love, he was

nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2). The same applies to the 9/12 Principles and Values, and it

also applies to us—without love, we are nothing.

TO DO:

1. What is the difference between charity and giving to charity?

2. Why is the person-to-person contact better than government-sponsored charity?

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 3. What motivated Mother Teresa?

4. How can you be a more charitable person tomorrow?

5. Why is coercive compassion wrong?

FOR MORE INFO: Review the dangers of compassionate coercion in Arguing With

Idiots, Chapter 7, “The Nanny State: Saving You From Yourself One Right At A

Time.”

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 CHAPTER 16. Sincerity

Sincerity is an interesting value. It is not one of the Ten Commandments. Nor is it

found in the Sermon on the Mount, nor in any ancient Greek and Roman philosophies.

Marcus Aurelius, however, comes closest to living this virtue. He was an emperor

of Rome, and took part in the high living, and the high drama that we would expect in a

Latin potentate. But he kept a journal, or a notebook of his thoughts, his meditations

about God, man, and the universe. His reflections survive to this day, and is know as The

Mediations.

When he was alone, this Roman emperor could open up, and be honest with

himself as he thought things through. This is the beginning of sincerity. We are honest

with who we are, what we are like, our weaknesses, our strengths, and our dreams and

drives.

In a word, we get real. We are authentic. There is no posing, like we did in junior

high, to make friends and be part of the in-crowd. We are, simply put, who we are, and

are comfortable in our own skin.

ADD MOMENT: Some people never get out of junior high and are still posers and

wannabes. My friends, this chapter is for you!

Glenn wrote:

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 “Most Real Americans don’t even know that they are the Real Americans.
They’ve been trapped in a box that other people built for them, and they think that
the box is real. They have no idea that it’s all a delusion.” (The Real America, 6-
7)

Being honest with ourselves is how we get out of that box. Sincerity is the key to

freedom.

Sincerity is crucial for Principles 2, which is centering our lives on God. That

great theologian and mystic, Huckleberry Finn, said it best: You cannot pray a lie.

I would add that you cannot live a lie. That is why insincere people are so hard to

live with. One day they are one thing, the next day another—twirling like a windmill or a

weathervane in a windstorm.

Maybe you are that person.

Become honest, and then become sincere. Have authentic relationships with

yourself, with God, and with others.

Sincerity can work its way up, form your house to the White House.

Get real and be real.

TO DO:

1. Why did Huck Finn say you can’t pray a lie?

2. What is the connection between sincerity and honesty?

3. Have you ever been insincere and gotten away with it? How did you feel

afterwards?

4. Glenn wrote, “That’s one of the biggest problems we have as Real Americans:

what we have in our hearts, we don’t share.” (The Real America, 10). Share your

heart with someone.

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FOR MORE INFO: An Inconvenient Book, Chapter 5: “Blind Dating: Playing the

Powerball of Love” is about sincerity on the Internet and dating.

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 CHAPTER 17 Moderation

You’ve heard of the expression, “Moderation in all things”? You know who said

it first?

Aristotle.

Yes, that Aristotle. The ancient Greek philosopher.

Here’s what he meant.

He said that the virtuous life was a balance of two extremes. For example,

courage is a balance between cowardice and foolhardiness. Right eating is a balance

between starvation and pigging-out. You get the idea.

But notice the power of this one idea—it has been around for thousands of years.

Why? Because it works.

Have you seen anyone who has their life out-of-balance, or disordered? They

spend 90% of their time obsessing about one thing. They obsess about shopping, or

video-games or porn, or what have you. They can even obsess about good things. A

woman can obsess over her children to the point of alienating her husband, or he his

career to the point of excluding his family. The same applies for health nuts who sneer at

the soda pop you drink.

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 We can also obsess in two other areas—religion and politics. Have you ever seen

someone who is so intent on doing God’s will that instead of heaven on earth, they make

a living hell for all around them? Or the activist who keeps snooping around making sure

that when you shop you use the canvas bags, and not the evil plastic sack?

That is why the value is really a practical value. We all want to do the right thing,

but in order to be effective, we must go about it in the right way. Moderation is what

keeps us sane.

II

There are several ways to be moderate. One is to have a balance in your life. We

all need diversion from time to time—variety being the spice of life. Another way is to

focus on principles and values (Ahem! The point of this book!).

It may not be matter of mere balance or equal time. Spending 30 minutes with

each child may not cut it, if one of your children is blind. In that case, you will

unquestionably need to spend more with the special-needs child, then with your seeing

children.

This is where hierarchy associate with values comes in. God, family, and country

clearly come first. This means our casual friends, the Guitar Hero group, and the

scrapbooking circle come second, and so forth. Values are important, but some values are

more valuable than others.

This is something that we all must come to on out own. Honesty and sincerity will

help clarify our values, and the 9/12 Principles and Values provide scaffolding for your

own life’s sculpture.

ONE LAST OBSERVATION:

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 So should we be moderate in our moderation? That depends up on the specifics of

the situation. If your house is on fire, then no. The circumstance demands that we use

extreme measures.

I see that the same principle applies to our country being on fire. Serious danger

demands serious action.

However, we should keep in mind that moderation is a means to an end, and that

we have to settle questions of effectiveness. Most people are not wealthy enough to be

full-time activists, so we cannot have Tea Parties 24-7-365. As the Law of Diminishing

Returns shows, so many Tea Parties would be ineffective.

The upshot is that we do not isolate one principle and value from another, and do

not become a “one-trick pony.”

TO DO:

1. Moderation is a balance between two extremes. Can you bee too loving? Too

generous?

2. Thing about the times when you felt like your life was out of control. What

caused the unbalance?

3. What is the difference between moderation as a way of life and being moderate,

as a political point of view?

4. Is moderation more than evenly dividing things up?

5. Why is it important to keep moderation in context with the other principles and

values?

6. How is moderation related to the Law of Diminishing Returns?

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 CHAPTER 18. Hard Work

Hard Work is the reason why God gave us dads.

I have rather unfond memories of being gotten-up out of bed on Saturday

mornings, and sent out to do odd jobs around the house. Clean out the driveway, dig out

the basement, weed the garden, mow the lawn, … you get the idea. You probably did the

same thing yourselves.

But when I got to college, my perspective changed. It became very apparent

which roommates had a dad who instilled a work ethic, and those who did not. Another

one of my unfond memories involved a roommate who complained about the dishes not

being done. Upon investigation, we learned that all the dirty dishes were his.

ADD MOMENT: Maybe the problem wasn’t with his father; maybe it was with his

mother who babied him. A twenty-one year old still expecting someone to change

his diapers …. not a good thought!

A math teacher of mine observed that lazy people are some of the hardest working

people. She explained that lazy people cut corners and do a slipshod job with things.

When they finish, their half-baked job doesn’t cut muster. So they then they have to go

back and do the same job a second time, to get it done right. She said that if they had

done it right the first time, they would have done it with half the effort and work.

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 Miss Pratt, you were right!

Earlier I mentioned my father. On the way back from a family reunion, my dad

took us to see the railroad museum in Sacramento, California.

The Transcontinental Railroad is a concrete example of the power of work. Day

after day, the Chinese from the West and the Irish from the East pounded down sand,

shaped the land, split the rails, and laid the steel. It was slow work, with the record being

10 miles of track in one day. It was hard work, harder than mowing the lawn, but they did

it.

And when they did it, not only did they unite the nations, but improved the both

the quality and the quantity of life for millions. Fresh food, easy travel, mail delivery,

tourism—the standard of living was raised never seen before in the 5,000 previous years

of the earth’s existence. It was a miracle of blood, sweat, and tears, and a triumph of

effort.

Our space program is the modern day equivalent of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Millions of man-hours go into building our space vehicles, the astronauts practice for

hundreds of hours—monotonous hours—of launching, landing, and performing the

spacewalks. Considering the risks involved, it is amazing that we have had only 17 deaths

in our space program. But on top of that, we have had success after success in expanding

our understanding of the universe, and expanding our horizons even beyond the stars.

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 ADD MOMENT: If America is evil, then compare the US space program to al-Qaeda’s

space program. Wait a minute—they don’t have one!

Work is a blessing. Industry can be sweet music. It is something that we really

cannot talk about; by definition, it is something which we must do.

So get busy!

TO DO:

1. Someone once said, “Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.” What does

this mean?

2. What is the difference between hard work and busy work?

3. What happens when we don’t do the job right the first time?

4. Is sincerity hard work, or is insincerity harder?

5. Is being patriotic hard work? Is hard work patriotic?

6. What is the connection between faith and God and work? Why are religious

people like Joan of Arc so busy all of the time?

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 CHAPTER 19 Courage

When we think of courage, we think of one thing and one thing only: the

Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz.

We know the story. He was a bully living in the ghetto of Oz, but Dorothy and

crew stood up to him. He wilted and then admitted he was a coward. At the end of the

movie the defrocked Wizard gives the Cowardly Lion an award for “meritorious conduct,

extraordinary valor, conspicuous bravery against wicked witches”—the Triple Cross and

makes him a member of the Legion of Courage.

Stop and think about it, and maybe replay the movie. The award did not make the

Lion courageous. But it was an affirmation of the thing he had been doing all along:

defending Dorothy, fighting the flying monkeys, storming the castle.

That tells us something about courage. Courage is not the opposite of being

afraid; courage is something we do while we are afraid. It is not rash, but reasoned. It is

not brash, but bold. It is not overbearing, but has a firm and persistent confidence.

II

Humility reminds us of our smallness. Courage reminds us of our greatness. If we

are created in God’s image, and have that divine spark within us, then our possibilities

are limitless

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 III

So how do we develop courage? The same way the Lion did—we do small things,

one at a time, in a manageable fashion. Did you ever see What About Bob?, with Richard

Dreyfuss and Bill Murray? It’s the principle of Baby-Steps. Do something small, and

then build on it.

And keep this in mind: courage interacts with the other values. Since all truth is a

unit, courage is a form of humility, hard work, gratitude, hope and reverence. You can

see how reverent courage can be in the lives of Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, or Mother

Theresa.

And the good news is that you can have a reverential courage in your life, too.

TO DO:

1. H. P. Lovecraft said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and

the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” What are you doing

to conquer your fear?

2. How does God give us courage?

3. The root word of courage is cœur, or “heart.” How is our heart the source of

courage? How does our head relate to courage?

4. Courage is not just in big things, but also small things. How can we be

courageous in small things?

5. Soldiers are courageous. Can we, who are on the home front, be courageous, too?

6. Can we be both courageous and humble? Courageous and grateful?

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 CHAPTER 20. Personal Responsibility

Throughout this book, we have discussed both the locus and the focus of power.

Principles 4, 7, 8, and 9 all have as premise that we are in control, not them. The

politicians, the pundants, the bureaucrats, they are not in control. We are.

We surround them.

But we also need to step up to the plate. Stopping government abuse is not

enough. We need something to fill the power vacuum.

That something is us.

II

Glenn, as we all know, is a connoisseur of fine art and high culture. So let me

quote this poem:

Know then that ev'ry soul is free,

To choose his life and what he'll be …

Freedom and reason make us men:

Take these away, what are we then?
Mere animals, and just as well,
The beasts may think of heaven or hell.

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The point of these verses is simple. The remind us that deep inside, regardless of what

experiences we have had, regardless of how many times we have been abused, raped,

molested, fired, teased, spat upon, hates, that we have a free will. We have the power to

both choose and to act.

We are more than the sum total of our life’s trauma. The Abuse Excuse doesn’t

fly.

III

From Glenn:

“It was not the Columbian drug lord who made me snort cocaine. It was me.”

“It was not Jack Daniel’s who made me take a drink. It was me.”

“It was no the guy pouring the Bicardi who put me behind the wheel. It was me.
…
“Why should he be responsible if I drink and drive? I’m the one ordering the
drinks! ” (The Real America, 51)

IV

In one sense, personal responsibility is really the First Value. We get right with

ourselves (honesty and sincerity and a lot of introspective hard work). Then we get right

with God (Principle 2). Lastly, we get right with our families (Principle 4).

Then, and only then, are we ready to take on the community and the nation

(Principles 8 and 9).

But it all begins with us.

From Glenn:

“So many people think that you spend your whole adult life just trying to recover
from your childhood. You can either choose to look at it that way, or you can take

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 responsibility for where you are right now: What did I learn form that
experience? Although it may not seem positive now, what is it that I can bring
form that experience to make my life more positive right now? That’s where
responsibility kicks in.” (The Real America, 57)

TO DO:

1. Why is personal responsibility so important?

2. Growing up, what things taught you to be responsible? Are you teaching those

same things to your children?

3. What is government doing to make people irresponsible? What can we do to

change things?

4. What is the connection between hard work and personal responsibility?

5. What is the connection between rights and responsibility?

FOR MORE INFO: Read Real America, Chapter 2 “The Great American Lottery and

the Decline of Personal Responsibility” and An Inconvenient Book, Chapter 20:

“Poverty Prozac” and Arguing With Idiots, Chapter 7: “The Nanny State.”

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 CHAPTER 21. Gratitude

Ronald L. Dart, a radio minister, once wrote something that absolutely

revolutionized my thinking about gratitude. He began his discussion by mentioning a

lady who said she felt guilty about being white and privileged.

He then posed this question: “But why should a person feel guilty about being

white, black, Asian, tall, short, male, or female? For that matter, why feel guilty about

being well off unless you stole it?”

Stop a moment. How much control do you have over your race, and over the

circumstances of your birth? How much moral agency did you exercise in making that

decision? Why, then, do we feel guilty over something like that?

Furthermore, was it our choice to make other people be born in different races, or

to be born in poverty?

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 ADD MOMENT: Deep Theological Question—what purpose does race have in God’s

plan for us?

If we have no choice in sending people to be born into oppressed races, ethnicities, or

send them to be born into poverty, what right do we have to feel guilty about it? We can

feel sad and sympathetic, but feeling guilty implies that we have committed a moral

wrong.

There is such a thing as misapplied or misunderstood guilt.

Back to Mr. Dart’s comments. Later in the essay, he explained that one of the

reasons why we feel guiltily is that we do not feel grateful

“I think all this comes back to the difference between guilt and gratitude. There is
a segment of our society who are white and privileged and they feel guilty about
it. … This segment of our society is extremely influential. The reason this is a
problem is that these people don’t know God, and therefore they can’t be grateful
for who they are and what they have. They blame themselves for the intractable
social problems they see because they are unable to blame sin. …We should not
let ourselves fall into that temptation. We should learn … to be grateful, not
guilty.” (See James 1:2 ff.)”

ADD MOMENT: Yes, this is very religious, but Principle 2 is about God.

There was more to Mr. Dart’s article, but these are the relevant points. Principle 1

is that America is good. Principle 2 is that we have faith in god, and that we center our

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lives in Him. If we combine both of these principles, we see that America is a gift from

God. We should be grateful to Him for blessing us.

II

Gratitude extends to other areas of our lives. At bare minimum, we should revive

the habits of “please” and “thank-you.” Both these expression show our gratitude towards

others for the things they do and for who they are.

Start with your family. Start with your co-workers. Start with someone—anyone

—and express our gratitude for who they are and what they have done for us over the

months and years we have known them.

Make gratitude a part of you prayer life. Instead of giving God a cosmic wish-list,

thank him for what he has given you: life, breath, the change to come to earth and to be a

better person each day.

Gratitude not only involves a change of habit, but also a change of heart and of

mind. For five minutes each day, just think about what you are grateful for. It can change

your whole way of thinking.

TO DO:

1. What are you grateful for? Why?

2. Thanksgiving is a date of gratitude. Why is it important to have a holiday

celebrating gratitude? What can we make each day a thanksgiving?

3. Have you expressed gratitude to your family? Friends? Politicians? Servicemen?

4. Every day take several minutes and think about what you are grateful for. Record

these thoughts and feelings in a journal.

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 AFTERWARD: THE POWER OF TEACHING

If I were to fault the George W. Bush administration, it would be in one area:

teaching. He did what he thought best, and for eight years he kept this country safe from

anther 9/11. And he deserves all credit for that. But his administration were not teachers.

They did not teach the people what they were doing, and more importantly, why.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, never let the opportunity pass to teach. Be it at

the 1976 Convention where he lost to President Ford, or at the US Ranger monument at

Ponte du Hoc, or with his farewell address (which rivals Washington’s Farewell

Address), Reagan was always the teacher.

In fact, it went beyond teaching. He said of his earlier words that he was not

delivery merely speeches, but that he was preaching a sermon (An American Life, 132).

That is the spirit. We must teach. We must preach. We must have the evangelical

fervor, without the fanaticism. This is our call.

Again! We must persuade! We must teach! We must preach! We must preach to

choir, because even believers need strengthening. We must get the message out to those

who are confused, lost, or who, at the moment, seem to be our enemies. We must get this

message—wasting and wearing out our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors for the

cause of truth and freedom!

GO TO IT!

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ONE LAST WORD FROM GLENN:

“Look at the individual issue. Connect

with your heart, your mind and your

God. Honestly question the source, and

honestly question yourself. Just

remember, the truth never changes …

it’s just our understanding of truth that

does.” (The Real America, 161)

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

KENDAL BRIAN HUNTER is glad you read this book, and hopes that it has been

helpful. He was born in California, is an Eagle Scout, served a mission for his church in

Portugal, and graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA in History with a

minor in Political Science, if you couldn’t tell. He has also written for LDSBlogs.com,

Ornery.org, and has written a biblical commentary called Consider My Servant Job:

Lessons in Faith, Humility, and the Atonement (Cedar Fort, 2004).

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Beck, Glenn. The Real America. Pocket, 2005.

Beck, Glenn. An Inconvenient Book. Threshold Editions, 2007.

Beck, Glenn. Arguing With Idiots. Threshold Editions, 2009.

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Bill of Rights. 2009-10-06

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Guilty%20or%20Grateful.htm

The Declaration of Independence. 1776.

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Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers.

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