Ryan Reynolds (5:13)
This is one of the saddest people. This is one of the saddest clips I've seen in a long time. I like Tucker Carlson and I like Ted Cruz. I'll tell you a story about a small town. It's not unlike yours, not unlike mine. Three men live side by side. One was a baker. One was a preacher. One was a school teacher. They had known each other for years. They had raised their kids together. They sat on the same bleachers at football games. They argued about taxes at the diner. They brought pies to one another's porches when life fell apart for that family. And they didn't agree on a lot of things. One of them was a conservative. Another one was a liberal. The preacher. He was more concerned about heaven than Washington. But they all talked. They disagreed. They argued. Sometimes they listened. Because somewhere deep down, they had one thing in common. They cared. They cared about their town. They cared about their kids. They cared about what kind of life they were leaving behind for those kids. Then a storm came. Bad storm. Not of wind and rain and lightning and thunder, but of ideas. Headlines, hashtags, rumors, bots. People all around that wanted to separate these three men. They began to mistrust. It was a storm that whispered in their ears. He's not just wrong, he's evil. She's not just different, she's dangerous. And little by little, the voices that had once shared coffee and laughter were replaced with silence. Then suspicion, Then contempt. And then the baker accused the teacher of brainwashing his kids. And the teacher called the preacher a bigot. And the preacher, heartbroken, went to his chapel, wondering, what has happened? What has happened? And one by one, they all just stopped speaking to one another. They sat on the same bleachers, but on opposite ends. Now they passed each other, but they passed in silence. When one's house burned down, nobody called the others to help. Now Let me ask you, how close are we to that moment? How many of our friendships are already buried, buried deep under the weight of a single disagreement? I have been wrong in my life more than I've been right. Are you right more often than you're wrong? I am wrong more often than I am right. And I am wrong. I hope I'm getting better at this, but I am wrong. And it is only in my arrogance that I fail to say, wow, that was a huge mistake. When did we forget to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt? When? When did we? When did we forget? Being wrong doesn't make you wicked. What kind of country are we building if no one is allowed to be right? No, sorry, let me say this. Right. When no one is allowed to be wrong on their way to becoming right. Because when I'm wrong, I learn from it and I become more right the next time. What kind of country will we have if no one is allowed to be wrong on their way to becoming right? Or having serious disagreements on how we view something. But we still have the same love of country and the same basic understanding of what this country means. And yet we blow each other up. There's no need for an enemy. Judging right from wrong isn't just about being right. It's about how we do it. Do we look at another person's intent or do we look at just their latest post and not really even know the person? Do we try to understand or do we rush to destroy? I can say so many great things about Tucker Carlson and his intent and what he believes. He believes in the same kind of country I do. He believes in freedom. We don't necessarily agree on the way to get there, but I don't doubt his love for country, and I don't doubt Donald Ted Cruz's love of country. And we don't agree on everything. But I'm not an enemy of those two. And neither of them are enemies of one another. And yet now they are. Now you are forced to decide which one is on your side. We're holding our. We're holding others to standards. We can't survive ourselves if everybody if that. You have to be in complete alignment with me and not. Not the Constitution, but with me. Me and my friends and the friends that I have today because I might turn on my friends tomorrow because they don't agree with me. What is left? You'll be left standing alone. You might be right, but you'll be surrounded with nothing. Trust takes time. Violation of that trust happens quickly. But how many times have we really been violated recently? How many times have people really violated our trust? And how many times has that violation come from a post where you didn't even really hear the full context? Or somebody who is just grinding axes because they both. You. You like both of them, but they are just going at it because in the moment, in the heated moment, they can't find a way to each other. And neither one of them is willing to take a breath and say, can we start this conversation again? And if they did, you're not going to see that on social media. You'll never know if they did that. Trust takes time. Humility takes practice. And grace. Grace is the one thing we all want for ourselves, but seem like we're unwilling to give it to anybody else. It's easy to win an argument. It is really hard to win a person. So maybe we should ask ourselves a couple of questions here. Am I listening to respond? Because I think that's what most of us do. We listen to respond, and we respond to win. Are we listening to respond or are we listening to understanding? Do we want truth or do we want a victory? Am I giving others the freedom to change their mind like I may have to tomorrow? We're headed towards a very different nation where all of us, we're. We're going to be a nation of very lonely victors. I won, won, won, won, won, won, won. And the echo just keeps on going because no one is around. We're all sitting on a hill of ashes, shouting, I was right, right, right, right. Look, I. I'm not. I don't agree with a lot of things, and I get really. I mean, I get really hot sometimes because I can't believe people. Stupidity. But you know what? I've been really stupid at times, too. I think humility is the key to all of this. And we are so. We're all in our lizard brains. And now our final battle. We are. We're just tearing each other apart. We're tearing our own side apart. I mean, look at what happened with Elon Musk and Donald Trump. I like both of those men. I didn't want to see those guys fight. I still don't want to see those guys fight. I would love to see them. It would be great, it would be awesome if they could come together. And even if when they came together, they hugged it out and said, I don't agree with everything he says, but he's still my friend and we're still on the same fight, I. I don't agree with what he's doing here, here, and here. And he doesn't agree with me. Here, here and here. But we know one thing, this country is worth saving. And while we might disagree on how to get there, we both know we have to get there. And if we continue to divide ourselves, there will be no one left to enjoy the country and we'll never be able to save it by ourselves. So we can either just keep bashing each other and, and, and, you know, I give this monologue to me as well. I want you to know it is so hard for me to give you the monologue I'm giving you right now for a couple of reasons. It's not the monologue I want to give. The monologue I want to give, oh, is really passionate. It's also not the monologue you want me to give because do you know what is happening with AI right now? Right now with AI they are now changing the algorithms to give you the answer you are looking for. We are now training AI to put us into more of a bubble and convince all of us that we are right because it will give you the answer you want. Could anything be more destructive? When the lights go out, the schools burn down, your house burns down, when the next storm rolls in, it ain't going to be our righteousness that saves us. It's going to be the friend, it's going to be the family member that's still willing to pick up the phone even after the last disagreement and say, I'm here for you, I'm coming to help. Let me tell you about Patriot Mobile. You know, if I asked you to put a price on car, you could do it, might not be exact, but you could name a number, certain amount of money where if handed you in cash, you'd be willing to hand over the keys. Now, how about your house? Your house, that's a harder one. There's history there, memories, roots. There's still probably still a number there, right? So the question that actually matters is what about your principles? Is there a price on your principles? No, there's not, you know, and there's not a price, especially, you know, when, when you're paying a bill to one of the big cell phone companies, Verizon, AT&T T Mobile. Part of that money is going to organizations that stand against your principles. But there is a choice, and it's Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile gives you the same great coverage on the same cell towers, but they donate to causes you actually support. Pro life organizations, first responders, religious liberty veterans. Ask yourself again, is there a price on your principles or is this where you draw the line? Make the switch today. Go to patriotmobile.com beck or call 972 Patriot. 972patriot patriotmobile.com Beck use the promo code beck for a free month of service. Patriotmobile.com beck or call972patriot. Now back to the podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program. John, welcome to the program.
