Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
* * *
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Contents
Prologue: Wrath Makes Him Deaf
PART ONE: WE HAVE A PROBLEM
1. Hello, My Name Is Glenn, and I Am Addicted to Outrage
2. The Story of Outrage
3. Here’s Why Outrage “Works”—and Why It’s More Addictive than Heroin
4. Chemistry Class
5. So What Makes You an Expert?
6. Samantha Bee
7. Divisions
8. The Pushers
9. Sorry, Not Sorry
10. The Mountain between Us
11. Fascism—the Logical Consequence of Postmodernism
12. Link by Link
13. Urban Proximity, a False Togetherness
14. Into the Arms of the Arrogant and Ignorant
15. The Enemy of My Friend . . . May Not Be My Friend but Should Be My Teacher
16. Worse and Getting Worser
PART TWO: WHY WE MUST FIX THIS NOW
17. The End of the Human(ity) Era
18. The Future State of the Future State
19. Take This Job and Shove It
20. We’re in the Money
21. Judge, Jury & Executioner
22. Mitt Was Right
23. The Black Mirror
PART THREE: FINDING OUR UNUM
24. And the Truth Shall Set You Free
25. How to Think, Not What to Think
26. THINK
27. Fake News? Fake History!
28. Who Are We as a Nation?
29. The Case for Good
30. Shaving Ockham
31. Our Self-Evident Rights and Seemingly Invisible Responsibility
32. The Cages of Our Addiction
PART FOUR: RECONCILIATION
33. The Long Journey Back
34. The Only Thing Constant
35. God Is Expansive—Think Bigger
36. Line upon Line
37. Precept upon Precept
38. T. H. I. N. K.
39. On Saving the World
Postscript
About the Author
To those who are willing to step out in front of the crowd, to question, reason, and have the dangerous conversations. Men with whom I may strongly disagree at times, but will always consider Refounders of Reason and contemporary heroes: Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, Jonathan Sacks, Penn Jillette, and Joe Rogan.
There are things that I believe that I shall never say, but I shall never say those things I do not believe.
—I. Kant
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil . . . Not to speak is to speak.
—D. Bonhoeffer
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
—T. Jefferson
Prologue
Wrath Makes Him Deaf
The floor of the United States Senate was mostly deserted on the afternoon of May 22, 1856. Republican senator Charles Sumner was sitting at his desk, dutifully scribbling some notes. In an angry speech a few days earlier he had attacked South Carolina senator Andrew Butler, claiming, “The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, slavery.”
Then he had added derisively, “[He] touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder.”
It was a satisfying and, Sumner believed, absolutely necessary response to Butler’s own recent attempt to race-bait him by making sexual innuendos concerning female slaves.
As the gallery finally emptied, Butler’s cousin, South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks, hobbled onto the Senate floor. His wounds from a duel earlier in life forced him to rely on a heavy cane with a gold head. Like so many Americans divided by the issue of slavery, Brooks’s hatred for the opposing side had reached the boiling point. Sumner’s speech, he decided, was a scurrilous slander on both his cousin and the state of South Carolina. It had to be answered. He had considered challenging Sumner to a duel, but rejected that because the senator was not a gentleman. Instead he intended to humiliate him by beating him in public.
Brooks calmly accused Sumner of a public slander, and then began beating him savagely with his cane. He smashed him over and over, across his face, back, and shoulders. Sumner was beaten onto the floor, pinned under his desk, which was bolted to the floor, but still Brooks kept striking him. Sumner managed to rip the desk free and tried desperately to escape. Blood was pouring from his wounds. Several other senators tried to stop the attack but were held away by two other members of Congress wielding a cane and a gun. Brooks’s cane snapped into pieces, but even that didn’t stop him. He continued hitting Sumner with its remnants until the senator lay unconscious in a bloody heap on the floor.
While Sumner was rushed into the cloakroom for medical aid, Brooks walked out of the building and the pieces of the broken cane were collected. No charges were ever brought against the Democratic congressman, and Sumner eventually recovered. The attack made both men heroes to their supporters. Remnants of the cane were shaped into rings, which southern lawmakers wore proudly around their necks. Brooks received hundreds of replacement canes. In northern cities thousands of people attended rallies, helping to transform the new Republican Party into a political force, and more than a million copies of Sumner’s speech were distributed and prized as souvenirs.
Five years later the hatred between the North and South erupted into a civil war that was as close as this country has ever been to being ripped apart. An estimated eight hundred thousand Americans died during that war, 2 percent of the nation’s entire population. The end of the fighting in 1865 did almost nothing to stop the hatred, which continued to be felt throughout the country for decades. It seemed impossible that the situation would ever again reach that point, that hatred between Americans who share the same basic constitutional rights would threaten to destroy this country.
* * *
But then Al Gore invented the Internet. And made it available to all Americans, and provided social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that allowed people to anonymously express their opinions. And today we spend countless hours each day virtually beating each other with canes into bloody compliance.
PART ONE
* * *
We Have a Problem
And Jesus knew their thoughts and said unto him, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.
—Gospel of Matthew, 12:25, King James Version
“So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law?”
“Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil. . . . And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast . . . and if you cut them down d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that
would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”
—Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons
1
* * *
Hello, My Name Is Glenn, and I Am Addicted to Outrage
And unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past twenty years, chances are you’re addicted to outrage, too. If you don’t believe you are part of the problem, I recommend you start with my last book: Liars.
I know it is tough to even think about being part of the problem, but the truth is, we all are. Believe it or not, I have good friends across the entire political spectrum. We actually all like each other and respect each other. Over the years I have really tried to listen to those with whom I don’t always agree. I have learned a ton. Not just about the other “side” but also about me. My biggest mistakes always revolve around my thinking “I am right and they are wrong.” The moment I begin to feel that, I begin to believe that “the other side has nothing to teach me.” I have made this mistake many times; I have failed to listen, and it always creates problems. I did it in the 2016 election. I was so sure about Donald Trump that I failed to listen to what half of the country was actually saying. I had become so blinded by him that I failed to see the who and the why supporting him. Did you know that over 20 percent of Donald Trump supporters consider themselves Democrats and voted for Obama? Of course not, because if you know that, you begin to see deep flaws in not only the GOP but also the Democratic platform and candidates.
* * *
When I am listening, really listening, I discover something truly game changing. We many times—not always, but much of the time—are saying almost the same exact thing, just with different words. This is not true with Live-or-Die Demopublicans. Nor am I suggesting that those who believe in the republic under the Constitution and Bill of Rights will agree or perhaps even like a communist revolutionary. But if we actually listen to each other, we may find that one of us is mistaken on what we believe, what we think others believe, or what is separating us in the first place.
Many times we are not even aware of what the real divide is. For instance, let’s dip our feet into the outrage pool and see if we cannot quickly see how our vision is being blurred intentionally on both sides:
The border issue over the summer of 2018.
It began in the opening weeks of June, with the outrage of pictures of border kids being “abused” and kept in “cages” by the Trump administration. The problem was it was a story from 2014. Many on the left were quickly embarrassed that they were “outraged” by something they all ignored under Obama. The editor of the New York Times, who tweeted the photos, quickly responded that it was “the weekend and the kids had distracted him.” But the speed at which these pictures circulated and the outrage they drew was powerful. So, I believe to turn their humiliation into a righteous cause, they quickly changed “the outrage” to the fact that these kids were being “separated from their parents.” Now, with all of the press on the same page, the fact that Obama not only had the same policy but defiantly defended the same policy in 2014 didn’t seem to matter. This is a problem that began under the Clinton administration. In 1997, the Flores v. Reno Agreement set formal policy for the detention of minors in the custody of the U.S. government’s Immigration and Naturalization Services. It included the guidelines that both the Obama and Trump administrations were following, which did include the detention of illegal-alien minors until a suitable adult relative or guardian could be identified.
However, as is the case with every “Band-Aid,” this only created a bigger problem: human trafficking. Drug cartels realized that if they could smuggle children over the border, they could “conscript” fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds to bring children over the border who would then be released, and the “children” would be given to “relatives.” The children were being sold into slavery. Thus, the Wilberforce Act was passed under George W. Bush to try stop the human trafficking problem caused by the Reno decision. Back to square one and a half. When Obama had a massive influx of “refugees,” the system quickly became overloaded. I know, because I was one of the few “reporters” there. The government was paralyzed, and because it did not see the crisis, the press never showed it to the American people. The very same ICE agents whom Americans are now publicly “stoning” are the people who quietly came to me and begged me to bring attention to what was being done to these kids. Their biggest problem then, as it was mainly underage kids without parents, was the fact that the children were all being separated by age. So, if a group of brothers and sisters came over together, for example, a fifteen-year-old son, a twelve-year-old boy, and a six-year-old sister, they were all placed in different “rooms,” “areas,” or “cages.” The trauma that these children were undergoing was beyond understanding. At one point under President Obama, more than 25,000 children were held. When Trump took over there were still 10,000 in custody. At the time of the media outrage that number had grown to 12,000. Some of the additional 2,000 had been separated from their parents. The vast majority had not been. Had they been ripped apart as brothers and sisters? Most likely the majority of them. But still today, the press doesn’t care about that part of the story. Why? Because the outrage of children being taken by men with guns near barbed wire is more than enough to begin to evoke images of a Nazi concentration camp. CNN actually aired an interview with George Takei, who did a grave disservice by distorting and dishonoring the truth of what FDR did when he interned all Americans of Japanese descent. These were Americans, some of whom were held for months in horse stalls at California racetracks. These citizens, many if not most of whom were born here in America, spent most of the war in American “concentration camps,” without trial or charges. In the end we treated them shamefully, and when it was all over, sent them back “home” here in America with no money, house, or property returned and most likely to hostile neighbors.
But this idea of American concentration camps is a powerful enough outrage to blot out all reason. If you dare say anything but dismantle the SS, which now is ICE, you are for these camps and are a monster. Hitler versus Jesus.
Yet if we can strip away the outrage, let’s look at the facts. Did you know that 70 percent of Americans agree, both right and left, that breaking up families on the border is wrong? Only 4 percent agreed with the Obama or Trump policy. FOUR. That is three times smaller than the number of Americans who deny we actually landed on the moon. That is a small and insignificant group of people.
So what is it that we are fighting over? Well, the media and the left present America with a false option. No borders with no immigration enforcement, or Gitmo. This is not a serious solution for any country.
We need a balance between justice and mercy. Justice meaning if you break the law or cut in line, you are punished, corrected, or at least simply returned to “Go” without collecting $200. Justice is essential in society. Without it, civilizations break down. But it also must be balanced by mercy, or the state devolves into a communistic, Stalinist state. Mercy, in this case, means that we do all we can to ensure that those who need help and are true asylum seekers are given a fair hearing. We must protect the most vulnerable. So, how do we do this? Actually, in this case it is fairly easy. The first thing to do is to secure the border as we hire a butt-load of judges to hear cases at the border in as short a time as possible and find those who are true refugees and those who are not. This would require about five hundred judges in a “night court” sort of system and could turn the cases around in ten to twenty-one days. Refugees stay, as always, and the rest go home. If you do not have valid paperwork proving that these are your children, and refuse to submit to a DNA test, then your “children” are kept here in foster care. (Warning: This is a Band-Aid and a point of failure, but we cannot send them home to foster care, as these places in foreign countries are many times engaged in human trafficking.) At the same time this process is being put into place, the State Department should run ads in
Latin America reinforcing the idea that people should NOT send their kids alone to America or come to America as “illegal.” If they need protection, they should immediately go to the U.S. consulate in their area.
Crisis is caused by chaos. The first thing a nation must do in a crisis is to bring clarity. The media and special interest groups are doing the opposite.
Meanwhile, the left and right are left arguing something that only 20 percent actually want: full amnesty and open borders. Which provides neither justice nor mercy. So, why do 80 percent think that half the country is an enemy of freedom or refugees or that the other half wants chaos on the border? Because we are being painted a picture of MS13 gang members gladly being welcomed by the left, or David Duke holding the first Klan campfire on the right. Neither is true. We are all being used.
This is part of the problem to which this book hopes to bring clarity. But it begins with us and our willingness to suppress the “outrage” and look at all sides. A willingness to see how the problem is amplified by each of us. It is easy to see the problem in the other person, or “political team,” and the urge to scream “hypocrite” no matter which team you play for is almost overwhelming at times. But let us, for just a minute, consider that perhaps the other side has a valid reason for calling us names, or we them. Forget about the past, who started it, or even “they are sooo much worse.” Let’s just examine our thoughts, words, and actions. Then, stop listening to the “outrage” and begin to look to the facts on each side. Isn’t the entirety of man’s freedom worth seriously considering this thought? If I am wrong, we may find ourselves fighting in the streets. But if I am correct, it just might mean that if enough of us on both sides begin to drop the outrage and anger, we just may stand a chance and heal this nation.