The Glenn Beck Program - Best of The Program | Guests: Kelly Shackleford & John MacArthur | 8/12/20

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

A California teacher who fears losing her job speaks anonymously about how districts are adopting communist ideas and critical race theory and want to hide what they’re teaching from parents. First Liberty Institute president and CEO Kelly Shackleford discusses the growing attack on religion. Grace Community Church Pastor John MacArthur called his latest service a “peaceful protest." Are we in the end of days? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the podcast today. Kamala Harris is the VP pick for Joe Biden. We go into that and what she's going to do for the campaign. Elon Omar won her primary. I'm sure you're very excited about that. We'll get into that. Jason Butchell joins us on tonight's program on Blaze TV with Glenn Beck and on Glenn TV. That's one you are not going to want to miss. We have a preview of that show. We talked to teachers and pastors today about all the crazy stuff, the way the government is cracking down, and the way the teachers are being told they have to do all sorts of crazy things to teach kids about critical race theory. The truth there is absolutely insane.

Get into the podcast every single day on any of your podcast apps. You can also get Stu Does America and subscribe and rate and review both of those podcasts if you wouldn't mind taking a quick second. Tonight is the night on Wednesdays where it's back-to-back on Blaze TV. it is Stu does America right into Glenn Beck Glenn TV and that you can know what's get your subscription at blazTV.com slash Glenn. Use the promo code Glenn.

It'll save you 10 bucks. It's also on Pluto TV. If you have that, it's free there. And on YouTube, if you go to YouTube, search for Stu. You'll find my show. You can start there and then go to Glenn right after. Check out the podcast today. Here it is. You're listening to. Wilford is a good friend of the program, been on several times. He is doing, well, I mean, he's doing God's work.

literally and figuratively, and it was a really great three years. And then in the last three months, it is really kind of turned a nasty corner. President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, Chief Counsel of First Liberty Institute. This is a group that works on protecting the First Amendment, our First Liberty and religion. Kelly, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Glenn. Happy to be on. Am I, is it an overstatement to say we've gone from the best of times to the worst of times? Yeah, in some ways. I mean, obviously the short term is just vicious.

I mean, I even think back eight years ago, I think we had 48 cases that year. We had 300 this last year. It's just ratcheting up, and people see it, right? I mean, you've got, they're decapitating statues of Jesus. I mean, the best exam, we've had hundreds and hundreds of churches calling us during this, you know, coronavirus attack on churches going on around the country. But I thought, and I don't know if you saw this going, I bet you did, what would happen in Portland two weekends ago, I thought was the visual of the entire, you know, last four months, which was they took a stack of Bibles and used those to acknowledge.

them to light the American flag. And to me, that was the visual, is if you're going to take America down, you've got to get rid of the church, of religious freedom, because that kind of moral constraint gets in the way of oppressive governments. So, Kelly, there's a, there's a few things. First of all, no one is, no one is, is really even speaking out about the, the literal attacks on the churches. As you said, churches have had statues of Jesus, desecrated and beheaded. You've had all kinds of destruction being done to our churches, and nobody is saying anything. And that is not a coincidence when you have Marxists marching in the streets. And then we also have the government not recognizing all of the First Amendment. They'll say, oh, you have a right to

protest if you're on the right side, but you don't have a right to make your own decisions when it comes to church. And the worst place this is that I have found, New York and California, we've had more protections put in and the Constitution strengthened on the First Amendment over the last three years, thanks to Donald Trump. But it doesn't seem to matter right now what the Constitution says. Yeah, I really do think it's a dichotomy right now. I mean, we're in, let me sort of, as bad news, good news, I guess.

Bad news is we're in a huge battle right now for whether the government controls, you know, the church, whether the government controls First Amendment. I mean, we started out at First Liberty. I mean, people can go, Glenn, if they want, the First Liberty.org, and we have a list of all our victories. We want every case we filed during the pandemic. and we filed smart lawsuits. We knew how difficult it would be to win when judges are going, well, I don't want to overrule somebody who's trying to protect public health. But, you know, we waited.

We filed the right ones, and we established a lot of good law. Well, then a lot of people started filing lawsuits that weren't so smart. And you had some bad judges. They were filed in bad places. And now it's just a mess. Nobody knows whether the Constitution is going to protect them or not. And so we're fighting this out. I hope eventually we get a good case to the Supreme Court, and we can clear this up.

But in the meantime, right now, it's just chaos because there are a lot of crazy lawsuits and crazy judges and crazy mayors or governors that are doing things that are clearly unconstitutional. But, you know, you've got to get into the courts and you've got to get these things corrected. And unfortunately, it takes time. And right now we don't know where we're going to end up. at the end of this, because I'll tell you this, if the rule is that if a government, if a government official declares an emergency, then your rights are gone, then none of us have any rights, because any government official can declare an emergency. And so things like, you know, you can't sing at church because, you know, you're, because that's a danger for

spreading the virus. But you can scream with, you know, 10,000 people at a protest. I mean, that's just complete nonsense and it's clearly discriminatory and it's clearly unconstitutional. But that's what's happening out there. We had one situation, Glenn, where they were going to have a worship outside and the county was telling them that it was illegal for them to worship outside on the beach. So there's a lot of stuff going. I will tell people, though, we are winning these lawsuits. if you file them, if you're smart. And I think we're going to eventually... Define smart.

What does that mean? Well, for instance... What is a smart lawsuit? You've got to know, I mean, take good facts. There are tons of these. And for instance, let's take the very first one. When we hit at this pandemic, we knew this was very dangerous. There is no case law on what the Constitution says in a pandemic.

I mean, we've never had that before, or we've gone into court. We were watching, you know, fathers throwing a baseball with their sons being arrested in front of their children, right? Everybody was like, was the Constitution apply anymore? And so we knew the first case had to be the right case. And so we filed a lawsuit. We thought this was the right case. It was right before Easter Sunday. And it was a church in Louisville that was actually told they could not drive in their cars.

They were trying to have a service some way on Easter. So they came in their cars. They listened over the radio to the pastor. You can't pass the virus from car to car, right? And not only did they outlaw it, the governor of Kentucky had said they're going to go to every parking lot on Sunday, church parking lot, right down the license plate of every person, and they were going to be visited their home by police and told that they had to be quarantined. So this is like something from China. And so we filed a federal lawsuit.

We got Judge Justin Walker who really laid the wood to the people and what they were doing there and said, that is not what we do in this country. The Constitution does apply. And it was a great sort of reminder or bringing back the Constitution. That's a smarter lawsuit. You know, let's get victories. And let's not file, do that sort of Hail Mary type things that, you know, unless you get the right judge, you're not going to win, because this is a new thing for a lot of these judges.

And so we have to come forward with good facts, with good arguments, and really file them in the right place, because this is a very important battle for the future of our country. What does it mean if Donald Trump is not the president and we have the left take over with as many vacancies that are going to be on the president? the Supreme Court, and they could even pack the court. What does that mean to freedom when we're so close to losing it with this president and with the Constitution? Yeah, I would tell people, like you said, Glenn, before the pandemic even, I mean, we were really turning the corner on, we've gotten so many good judges in that the law is

starting to change. We're going back to the words of the Constitution. We had a significant victory a year and a half ago at the Supreme Court in one of our cases that really was a major change, positive change for religious freedom. And so the good news is we were really starting to turn things around. And I think what would have been maybe 40 or 50 years. If we can keep that going, obviously that's wonderful for our country. But like you said, if they pack the court, then the court is no longer a court. It's just a political body.

because whoever comes in next time, they'll just add people to the court, too. And so now it's a political body. It's not a legal body. It's just whoever you want to vote in, and it would destroy our Supreme Court and the rule of law. I have to tell you, I think with John Roberts, there it is a political court now. I mean, you can't make sense. They're heads of tales of his rulings because it just seems to wherever the wind is blowing. And it's crazy.

Kelly, thank you so much for everything that you do. If you are looking to support an institution that really is making a difference, and we need our first liberties more than ever that we've got to protect the right of free speech, the right of religion, first liberty is on it, and they could use your support. It's firstliberty.org, the first liberty.org. This is the best of a Glenn Beck program. We have with us now a anonymous teacher from California that is, it feels it is crucial to raise the alarm in California. And I think this applies to every school district all around the country.

She's a teacher. She is joining us now. We're not going to get into any other details because this is how hostile. of an environment it is now to speak out if you're a teacher. Welcome to the program and thank you for your courage. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. You're welcome.

So tell me what happened to you just a few weeks ago that made you say, wait, wait, wait, hold it. What's happening now? Well, to be honest with you, the wait, wait, hold on what is happening has been over a decade in the making. But just specifically a couple weeks ago, I started noticing, you know, I'm watching the news, and it's all about race. And they stopped using the term civil rights. And they started using the term critical theory.

And I went, what is critical theory? Which I think a lot of the country is going, okay, I mean, it's probably just kind of race theory. There's been more research done. Well, it didn't sit right with me. So I listened to a couple podcasts about it. I did my own research online. and I found out, it's founded by Karl Marx. Red flag, red flag.

Okay. Literally. It's safe. Yeah. Facts, data, and the scientific method are a white concept. So if you use facts and data to disprove an argument against a black or an oppressed person, you are proving you are racist because, again, facts and data are, quote, false whiteness. I want to reiterate critical race theory.

It holds, and I'm quoting, data, facts, and the scientific method are whiteness and inherently racist. Therefore, if you use data to disprove an oppressed person's narrative, you are proving your ties to racism by using facts. It is. So this is why we can't have conversations, because as soon as you say, well, you know, I hear you on the police thing. I hear you on the shootings, but let's talk about black on black crime, which exponentially has a higher death rate.

That person would say, well, you're false, you're using facts, my feelings are worth more, which is craziness to me. So that was the first huge red flag, okay? So then I died a little deeper. Capitalism is racist also because it was developed by whites and does not force racial equity.

So these are the foundational principles of critical theory. I about fell off my chair. So I've been feeling really passionate about just getting this out here, but I mean, I knew it was kind of creeping into the educational system. I haven't seen that term used yet, but I've seen little things like that happening. So anyway, a couple weeks ago, the week before school starts, we have to have a training.

And I noticed that the training is on race, and I'm thinking, oh man, I'm in California, they better handle this well, right? I open up the training, and right across the top, it says critical race theory. Glenn, I wanted to quit on a spot, or go on a crusade, or text all my friends that have their kids in public school just going to get out now.

I cannot believe what I'm seeing. But of course, I want to read through it, give them the benefit of the doubt, because maybe the people who developed this don't know what critical theory is. So here are the main points that they taught us. Now this is in the training, this is in the training document for California teachers.

Okay. Not all California teachers, but I can tell you that it is endorsed by the California Department of Education, the California School Board Association, the Association of California School administrators, Bay Area Schools, the California Conservation Corps, and a bunch of other districts who have hired them to train teachers.

And you are not in a small school district in California. So it's a large number. I'm in a small-ish district, small enough to where I'm nervous, but I'm going to be identified. So people know me, so I'd rather, you know, stay anonymous. But in the training, it's called Epic Education. you can go on their website and look everything up. Here are their main points.

Owning property is whiteness must be abolished. So no one should own property. Okay. White people will only help a black person if it is in their own self-interest. That to me, I mean, let's just flip that back. A black person will only help a white person if it is in their own self-interest. If you said that, you'd be called a racist. and down. But if you flip the color of the skin of the person you're talking about, you're a

compassionate person. Right. And because of critical race theory, you defending that by saying flip that around proves that you are a racist. Exactly. Exactly. That's why we're not getting anywhere. That's why we can't agree to disagree. That's why we can't talk about the real issues of what's going on. That's why we can't talk about, I mean, I am a white female teacher, and I have had reverse racism against me multiple times in my own classroom. I walk on eggshells around my students of color because I want to make sure that they know that I love them,

that I care about them, that I want them to succeed, because I've had more experiences than I can count where if a black student doesn't get the grade they want, they're storming my door. I've been cussed out. I've been almost fired. Parents have gone to the superintendent to try to get me out. Even when I have documentation

proving why that student got the grade that they got, nope, it's because you're white. It's because you're white. And I'm going, if I said that about you, I'd be thrown in jail. You know what I mean? It's just insane.

So, okay, the other points are racism is inherent with all white people from birth. They can't help it, and they are unaware of it. Racism is permanent. So in my mind, if they believe it's permanent, why are we talking about it? Why are we trying to solve it? Well, it's permanent in white people. Yes. Well, and I'm a Christian. I believe we all have sin, right? But to say

that your sin is that you are racist just because you're white, it takes the individuality out of it and just, you know, this is a group sin. I don't care if you've been a kind of person to every black person that you've ever met. I'm telling you I've gone way out of my way to make sure that they feel loved and not that I'm perfect. I'm sure that I've screwed up many times.

But to say, just because you're white, you were racist. It is exactly what caused, it's exactly what caused or allowed slavery to happen. Exactly. Exactly. We said blacks are different. They're different than

us, they have some sin or some mark or whatever, and that's, they can never achieve. Yeah, that's how you, that's how you do it. Because your skin is dark, you are going to be my slave because you're not as intelligent as me. You know what I mean? All of these things, I mean, it just flipped the other way. It's just amazing. So there's a couple more. Children should be raised by a tribe, not a nuclear family with two parents.

So that's where you see parental rights being taken away slowly in school. So that's what I mean by this has been a slow kind of fade away from, I mean, don't talk to your parents about, you know, if you feel like you have homosexual feeling. Don't talk to your parents if you feel like you're a boy and you're really a girl. And teachers will tell you, and to some extent, I agree, there is a safety thing with parents at home because you don't know how parents are going to react to that. there might be abuse going on there. But in this training, they actually said, do not talk to your parents about this because they might not be enlightened enough

to realize their own racism within them. So let's just see this between us. Yes. And I've been reading an article and article now about teachers being worried because now we're all at home learning that parents, when they get their curriculum at home, they're going to go, wait.

My kids being taught this. and they're going to be outed. So I have a tweet thread from Matthew K. He's a teacher. So this fall, virtual class discussions will have many potential spectators, parents, siblings, etc., in the same room. We'll never be quite sure who's overhearing the discussions. What does this do for our equity inclusion work?

How much have students depended on the somewhat secure barriers of our physical classrooms to encourage vulnerability? How many of us have installed some version of what happens here stays here? While conversations about race are in my wheelhouse and remain a concern with a no-wall's environment, I am most intrigued by the damage of the helicopter snowplow parents who can do honest conversations about gender and sexuality. I mean, conservative, he goes on conservative parents are my chief concern. Yes. I mean.

They're threatening. Yes. And the thing is, you know, this is America. We should be able to have these hard conversations. I strongly agree with this. I strongly disagree with it. And that's what we've lost. It's no longer, let's hear both sides, which is actually in this training, we want to talk about the counter story. And they give the example of, well, we're tearing down the monuments because George Washington was a slave owner. The real story is, you know, he owned slaves. He didn't really

deserve to be, you know, in history. And so, okay, what about the counter-nary? about reverse racism. You know, we can't, we can't talk about both sides, and their whole point is, let's talk about the other side. It's just unbelievable to me. So, tell me how many other teachers feel this way like you do, that you're just, you've seen the slow boil, but now you realize this thing is boiling over. It's teaching now dangerous things.

It's become a cult. and you're in it. Are there teachers that agree with you, or are you in the minority? What? Oh, I am definitely in a very small minority. I reached out to a few of my colleagues after this training because it was all on Zoom. And you have to be really careful. I texted them, hey, how did you feel about that training that we just did?

And every single one of them called me and said, why you ask? because they didn't want to put it in writing. They didn't want, they wanted to know why I wanted to know. They wanted to know if I was a safe person to talk to. And I just kind of phrased it like, you know, there were a couple things that jumped out at me. Like, I would only help a black person if it was in my own self-interest. That rubbed me the wrong way.

And owning property is a white idea and no one should own property. Like that doesn't sit right with me. And as soon as I said that, a bunch of them opened up going, Yeah, this was garbage, but they couldn't put their finger on why. They just knew that there would be little bullet points in here that, oh, that didn't really sit with me. Because, again, especially on the Zoom call that we had, where we had the actual training speaking to us, it's all about compassion. It's all about why wouldn't you want to lift up your black students?

Why wouldn't you want to support them more? So they're phrasing it that, I mean, if you're just unaware that you've been hurting them for decades, So let's talk about that. Let's root that out. But again, the scary part was they never actually defined what critical theory is, which talks about, like I said in the beginning, the scientific method is false. Capitalism doesn't force equity. So this is communism, and it says right there it's developed by Karl Marx.

But again, to go back to your question, there are people in my district. But, I mean, I just talked to them on the phone the other night, and they all said, I can't believe you're even going on with Glenn Beck. show because I would be terrified. I mean, we don't even know each other are at my district. I commend you for your courage, and we all have to understand that freedom is not free, and this is our generation's battle. We are going to lose it unless people have the courage to stand up.

I encourage any teacher that is experiencing these kinds of. kinds of things to call in. We will protect your identity, but your voice must be heard, even if it is augmented like it is now. Your voice must be heard. People have got to start talking about it and letting others know they're not alone. Thank you again, and I hope that we have a chance to meet at some point in the distant future where I'm not outing you. And I hope we can stay in touch. Thank you. God bless you. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Also, we have John MacArthur. He is a legend, if you will, in the ministry business. He is the pastor of Grace Community Church, and I think he is going to be even more legendary because of the steps that he is taking now. He is in California. And he has deemed that church is essential. and I want to play his opening this past Sunday. This is what he said to his congregation.

Good morning, everyone. I'm so happy to welcome you to the Grace Community Church Peaceful Protest. Welcome to the program, John MacArthur. How are you, sir? Well, I'm very fine. I'm chuckling when I hear that because we normally begin with prayer. That was a little bit of a different approach to start a service. Yes.

Yes. But it is, in California, it is crazy that your First Amendment right to gather and have the services that are essential, I believe, to the soul of each individual and soul of our nation, that's not okay. But if you decide to engage in a peaceful protest, which looks an awful lot like a riot, you're fine. Yeah, that's absolutely right. The hypocrisy of it is, well, I guess you couldn't even call it hypocrisy. It's just blatant double talk because they're out front with it all. So we are targeted. There's no question about it. I go back to the fact that 364 babies are aborted in California every day.

We lead the nation. We'll have about 140,000 abortions this year. There's no moral high ground. The governor basically had a decree a year or so ago in which he invited people who couldn't get an abortion in another state to come to California, and you could get it here. It's funded by tax money. So there's no moral high ground. There's just what we feel is a targeting of churches based on fear, based on statistics that are not believable. You know, just before we move on from abortion, it was Kamala Harris now, the vice president,

pick that actually began the litigation against the reporter that did the uncovering of the selling of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood. That was Kamala Harris in California.

So, John, you are now standing up, and did you ever think that you might in this country be put in a position of someday following the Dietrich Bonhoeffer kind of path, where you go to jail for what you believe? You know, it was a reality, and increasingly so.

I've been at Grace Church 51 years. Life was fairly benign a half a century ago in terms of the thought of persecution. But in the last 10 or 15 years, this has been coming. it's been coming because of the corruption of the university system, which eventually puts everybody in leadership who has been jaded and sold an anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-American ideology. So there's an inevitability to it. One way to understand this, Glenn,

I don't know what you're going to say tonight. You kind of teased a little bit on that. I don't know what you're going to say tonight, but I believe it already, even I don't know what it is. Because you can just see the signs. Just a simple way that I look at this from a biblical standpoint, the human race is fallen. We know we're all sinners because everybody dies, and the wages of sin is death and the soul that sins will die. So death is the evidence of sin.

So how does God manage to cause flourishing in this massive collision of sinners on the way to death? He built into society four restraints. The first one is the law of God written in the heart. part of being human is having the knowledge of right and wrong, and it's in the heart. And then God gave a mechanism called the conscience, which is activated when you disobey that law in the heart. That's why people feel guilty. That's why there's deep fear, anxiety, depression, sometimes panic attacks over people's sinful behavior. That's a mechanism that God gives them so they don't continually destroy the soul.

The second mechanism, by the way, the law of God in the heart has a weapon. and the weapon is conscience. The second mechanism is the family and the father and the mother. And believe it or not, the weapon is the rod. The Bible talks about bear the rod and spoil the child. What that means is that there is loving discipline for misbehavior so that misbehavior has consequences. The third is the government, and Romans 13 basically says the government has a sword. That's their weapon to punish evil doers and protect those who do good.

and the fourth restraint in society are the people of God, the church that are salt and light, salt as a quiet influence, light as a blazing declaration of truth. So given those four restraints, am I surprised that basically the law written in the heart has been completely overturned and replaced with a corrupt, perverted law? And if your conscience gives you any trouble, you need to silence your conscience because you don't need to take any blame for anything you do. You shouldn't have any shame. So the conscience and the law of God in the heart has been devastated systematically

through the sexual revolution, homosexual revolution, and all the other stuff that comes with it, the Me Too movement, social justice, everything. Then the family, the family is the next barrier, the next restraint that allows humanity to flourish. And what's happened to the family, just complete devastation to the family. family to the degree that there is law being made to give some kind of normalcy to transgender people.

So the family's under assault. Next comes the government, defund the police. You have a generation of people milling around in the streets, destroying everything, because there never have been any consequences to their behavior as they grew up. So now we want to get rid of the police. Well, who's next? There's only one institution left, and that's the church. The police have a sword.

The father and mom have a rod. The law of God in the heart has a conscience. The church has the truth. That's the most deadly weapon of all to a world that wants to run from God and do everything that the sinful heart long. Silencing the church is part of it. So did I expect that it would come in my lifetime? Probably.

Probably. I don't know that this is something that has come as fast. as it appears, I think it's, it's been growing for decades. No, I think it's, you know, you, you've never gone in for a prostate exam, and you're 70. Well, all of a sudden, you're, you've got a month to live. Well, you could have seen it coming, but you didn't look. And many of us just turned away and we didn't look. And, and so we didn't realize we were being rotted from the inside out.

you know I I've talked to a lot of people and I said you know it actually give me a lot of hope if if Jesus were coming because I know he could fix it and he will when he comes but I also wouldn't be surprised if this this was the beginning of the end of days if you will do you do you find that more and more people are going you know I mean, are we approaching those times? Well, you know, Jesus said, no man knows the day nor the hour. So I'm not one to speculate, but I've never seen as many people hope it's soon as there are hoping now. Yeah. But I think there's another thing to look at. In the first chapter of the book of Romans, there's a verse, verse 18, that says, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth

in unrighteousness. No nation has ever held the truth and been unrighteous at the same time to the degree that the United States has, obviously founded on Christian values, founded on biblical principles. We've held the truth for the duration of our national identity, but we have held the truth increasingly in unrighteousness. And the Bible says God's wrath will be revealed, and here's how it defines that wrath in that same chapter. God gave them over. That's a Greek term that means handing someone over to sentence, to execution, to jail or whatever. So God handed them over, and first of all, to immorality. So the first way you know that a culture has been handed over by God is there would be a sexual revolution.

And God says, I'm going to turn you over to the consequences of your evil choices. Two verses later, it says God gave them over to homosexuality. So when you see a sexual revolution followed by a homosexual revolution, you're living, Romans 1. The third statement is he gave them over to a reprobate mind. I used to wonder, what is a reprobate mind, a mind that doesn't work? That's when you look at yourself and you're a man and you say, I'm a woman. That's insanity. And out of that insanity, it becomes impossible to go back because all rationality is gone.

So I think what we're seeing in America is the wrath of God in Romans 1 revealed on a society, and the evidence of it is sexual revolution, homosexual revolution, followed by a reprobate mind. So that America kind of looks like the Jerry Springer show. It's just deviation for the sake of entertainment. And the chapter ends by saying even though they know these things are wrong, they not only do them, but they approve them. they clap, they applaud at deviation and perversion. That's a cyclical kind of thing.

The Bible also says God has allowed all the nations to go their own way. So we're not the first nation who's gone down this path. This is pretty much how history goes. So whether this is just our end or whether this is the apocalyptic end of everything, I don't know, but certainly the wrath of God has been released on this country. It doesn't mean there's no great. There is always grace. This is the day of salvation.

Come to Christ. That's our message. Escape the wrath. Escape the judgment. God will show you grace. But I think America is experiencing that judgment. You don't hear people say those things anymore, John. And I appreciate your willingness to stand up and say what you believe and call your church back.

uh and uh and be willing to go to jail for the things that you believe are are true thank you for being on the program john appreciate it