Liars (36 page)

What separates most of those who are able to use fear motivationally from those who succumb to it is usually a higher sense of purpose, a greater meaning to their life. For me—and this isn't the answer for everybody—that greater meaning is service to God. For others, maybe their purpose is as simple as being a good parent, leaving an important legacy to their children, or just being a responsible citizen. But the key is that you need to find something that is bigger than you. Something that will outlast you.

I remember reading a book a few years back called
The Survivor's Club: The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life
, by Ben Sherwood. Ben went out and interviewed survivors of various incidents, tragedies, and illnesses, as well as experts, to analyze what qualities helped these people survive. What makes an effective survivor? Why do some people beat the odds and others don't? What he found was a mentality, an outlook, inherent in survivors: honesty about the situation they faced.

But honesty alone was not enough to survive; action was also required. When we are confronted with danger, our minds don't always recognize it at first. If we see something out of the ordinary that could be a threat, we don't immediately see the danger, because we're not
used
to seeing it and because we don't
want
to see it. It's called the normalcy bias. Our minds are programmed to find the normalcy in every situation in an effort to comfort and give us hope. That is usually a good thing—your brain rationalizes that turbulence on an airplane happens all the time, that bumps are part of flying, and that thousands of flights a day have turbulence with no consequences. But every so often, the normalcy bias gets in the way of seeing the reality of a situation: the noise in the night that's not just the house settling, the person acting strangely on the plane who isn't just afraid to fly, the backpack on the street corner that wasn't just forgotten by a kid.

What differentiates survivors from victims is that survivors act.
Armed with situational awareness, they overcome their normalcy bias and see danger coming well before anyone else.

I hope this book has given you that situational awareness. After this journey through the sordid, even bloody history of progressivism, you will see this danger where it lurks in modern political and cultural life. You will see the truth about what progressivism stands for and what it will do to America if we can't get our friends and neighbors to wake up.

Seeing the truth is brave. Seeing the truth is consoling. Seeing the truth gives people resolve. And seeing the truth gives us all the strength to face it with action.

God, hope, reason, action. These are the keys to fighting the fear factor.

Which is why, perhaps, progressivism these days seems to work so much better in the major metropolises of America. When I first moved to New York City and had an apartment somewhere up in the clouds, I would stand every night at the windows, looking at the sprawling city beneath me. Towering buildings, buses, taxis, parks—it was incredible. And it was all made by man.

When I left New York, I once again started looking up. The sky, the clouds, the stars at night. All made by God.

In New York, I didn't even know the people who lived on the same floor as I did. In rural America, you'd be hard pressed to find a family who doesn't know everyone in town. It's a big deal because it speaks to why progressivism does so well in cities. People don't feel that they need one another—let alone God—because they've got the city of New York, the MTA, the state of New York, and, of course, the federal government all looking out for them.

Sure they do.

Americans didn't use to
believe, as progressives do, that individuals couldn't progress and become better without help from government and elites who know better than us. Americans didn't use to believe, as progressives do, that we must surrender to others in order to improve our lives.

We can progress and improve ourselves. But only as individuals.

We recognize the danger. We've been able to put aside our normalcy biases and realize that this is not OK, that we are in clear and present danger.

Now it's time to act.

ALSO BY GLENN BECK

♣

The Immortal Nicholas

It IS About Islam

Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education

Agenda 21: Into the Shadows

Dreamers and Deceivers

Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

The Eye of Moloch

Control: Exposing the Truth About Guns

Agenda 21

Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals and the Media Refuse to Say

Being George Washington: The Indispensable Man, as You've Never Seen Him

The Snow Angel

The Original Argument: The Federalists' Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century

The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life

Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure

The Overton Window

Idiots Unplugged: Truth for Those Who Care to Listen (audiobook)

The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book

Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government

Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine

America's March to Socialism: Why We're One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades (audiobook)

The Christmas Sweater

An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems

The Real America: Early Writings from the Heart and Heartland

PART I: THE ROAD WE'VE TRAVELED

CHAPTER 1: ROOTS: HEGEL, MARX, AND THE MAKING OF HEAVEN ON EARTH

“frantically waving red bandanas”
Richard Franklin Bensel
, Passion and Preferences: William Jennings Bryan and the 1896 Democratic National Convention
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 224.

“ ‘hopes of their own inmost souls' ”
Richard Franklin Bensel
, Passion and Preferences: William Jennings Bryan and the 1896 Democratic National Convention
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 231.

“leader Europe had been waiting for”
Terry Pinkard,
Hegel: A Biography
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

“he dubbed the ‘general will' ”
David Wootton, “Introduction,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Basic Political Writings
, trans. Donald A. Cress, 2nd ed., (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2011), p. xxiv.

“ ‘were the first to attain the consciousness' ”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
The Philosophy of History
, trans. J. Sibree, (Kitchner: Batoche Books, 2001), p. 32.
http://www.hegel.net/en/pdf/history.pdf
.

“trying to build their individual fortunes”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
The Philosophy of History
, trans. J. Sibree, (New York: Colonial Press, 1900).

“ ‘conveyed across the border' ”
Karl Marx, “Suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung,”
Neue Rheinische Zeitung
, No. 301, May 18, 1849.

“ ‘the Young Hegelians' ”
Francis Wheen,
Karl Marx: A Life
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001).

“ ‘interested in their welfare' ”
Elmer Roberts,
Monarchical Socialism in Germany
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), p. 119.

“ ‘to the government' ”
Richard M. Ebeling, “Marching to Bismarck's Drummer: The Origins of the Modern Welfare State,” Foundation of Economic Education, December 1, 2007,
https://fee.org/articles/marching-to-bismarcks-drummer-the-origins-of-the-modern-welfare-state/
.

“ ‘a certain degree of circumspection and distrust' ”
James Madison, “The Total Number of the House of Representatives,”
Federalist
No. 55, in
The Federalist Papers
, February 15, 1788,
https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers
- TheFederalistPapers-55.

“a national standardized time system”
Thomas C. Leonard,
Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 3.

“guided by disinterested, expert social scientists”
Steven Mueller et al.,
A Spirit of Reason
, ed. Jackson Janes (Washington, D.C.: The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2004),
http://www.aicgs.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/muller.pdf
.

“had influenced the American Founders”
Thomas C. Leonard,
Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 17.

“ ‘than through any other institution' ”
David Henderson, “Richard Ely, Racist and State Worshipper,” Library of Economics and Liberty, May 14, 2011,
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/05/richard_ely_rac.html
.

“ ‘the advancement of common interests' ”
Richard M. Ebeling, “American Progressives Are Bismarck's Grandchildren,” The Future of Freedom Foundation, June 17, 2015,
http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/american-progressives-bismarcks-grandchildren/
.