EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

‘We Are Fighting People Who Want Power Over Us’

Glenn Beck sits down with Newsmax Editor Christopher Ruddy and reveals his “secret sauce” of success and offers his take on everything from Obama (he’s open to a meeting with him) to his worries about a PC coup (a “Reichstag fire” event).

Befuddling critics, rallying voters, and drawing back the curtain on low deeds in high places — Glenn Beck’s voice is truly unlike any other. In an exclusive Newsmax interview, the cable-news ratings giant explains why he foresees a looming “Reichstag moment” that will present severe challenges to the most cherished liberties Americans take for granted.

Beck himself has been under assault these days, from bloggers, faux boycotts, and establishment types. Yet he remains the living embodiment of Friedrich Nietzsche’s apothegm that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. With an extraordinary audience now exceeding 3 million a night, Glenn Beck is stronger than ever.

Newsmax: Certain people are hysterically against you. Why do they fear you?

Glenn Beck: They are not tied to values. They are tied to politics and power. Those people don’t understand real people. You see, these politicians that came to these town hall meetings, and they were talking at people, and they weren’t listening.

Newsmax: In your book Common Sense, you say that the battle we are in right now is as momentous as the revolution. Who are we fighting, and what is the agenda that we have in our battle?

Beck: We are fighting people who want to tell us how to live our lives and what to do. We are fighting people that want power over us. We are fighting exactly the same people without the British accent that our Founding Fathers were fighting.

They believed, just let people alone, you know, we’re all alike. Just leave me alone. Let me just be with my kids. Let me try something new. Let me develop something. Let me invent  something. Let me just go to work and answer the phones for a company. I just want to be left alone. These people have slowly but surely said, I’ll take care of you. I’ll help you. All for their own power and their own enrichment — government and companies, gigantic global corporations that don’t see America as anything other than a market.

America is a collection of different ideas that is as varied as you can possibly imagine and if you want to try a new idea, I may disagree with it — go for it, go for it brother, you are in America. But they want to put a cap on it.

Newsmax: One of the things I think conservatives like about you is that you also criticize Republicans when they get out of line. You said Bush’s policies should die a natural death. Did you really mean that?

Beck: Look, the shine came off of George Bush for me pretty quickly after 9/11. We started to not fight a war to win the war. Wars are horrible, ugly — it’s killing people. The idea is kill them faster than they can kill you, and kill them at such a rate that it takes their breath away and they put their guns down and say OK, OK, enough. That’s what it is about. We weren’t doing that, and now, we’re in this long, drawn-out war.

When somebody says to me I care about our security but forget about the border, that doesn’t make any sense, and so that made me look at Bush and say, “Wait a minute. He is for a big government. We’re fighting this war not to win it anymore, and I don’t know why, and we’re also clearly in bed with somebody that wants our borders open for what — for money?”

I’m not about money. I mean, I love money. I’m a capitalist. I love to make money, but that’s not my value and principle. My principle is freedom and securing that freedom.

Newsmax: You have been a critic of Obama, but if he were to invite you to the White House, would you go down and schmooze? And what do you think might come of that?

Beck: Schmooze — no. I respect the office of the president of the United States no matter what I think of his policies. I feel like Ronald Reagan did about the Oval Office: Wear a jacket. I would go because I was asked by the president of the United States. Do I think that we would have a meaningful conversation? I know I would, because I would speak directly. But I don’t believe that he necessarily would. I don’t know very many politicians that speak directly.

Newsmax: You’ve been critical of Obama’s FCC policies. He has a new diversity chief who bothers you, right?

Beck: Yeah, Mark Lloyd. We’ve played his speech several times where talks about the “important” revolution in Venezuela that was almost thwarted by Americans and the American government, who didn’t want Hugo Chavez in office. So they helped through radio. Excuse me? The important revolution? Here’s yet another Marxist, communist, fascist, who believes that the only true way to secure our nation is to have government control of all media.

Newsmax: So do you fear a coming attack on talk radio?

Beck: This is bigger than Obama. This framework has been laid for a long time. When it comes to the FCC, the Bush administration helped lay the foundation. But now, that foundation is being turned on. And I fear an event. I fear a Reichstag moment. God forbid, another 9/11. Something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced. God help us all.

Newsmax: You seem more concerned with the moral fiber. You resonate with people on a lot of levels, but one of those levels is being a family man. Talk about moral values and give me your take on the issue of abortion.

Beck: You start to devalue life, and you are in trouble. We have already seen it. Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar, and John Holdren, the science czar, talk about how you can off this person, off that person. Children with disabilities not as valuable as a person that is 15 years old that doesn’t have disabilities. Good God almighty! It is too dangerous of a slippery slope on values.

I’m a deeply religious man. There will come a time when I say more things that I have held back, and I have crossed one of those lines here recently and that is, America must fall to her knees. America must reconnect with the Almighty. America must understand the  only thing that will save this country is God.

Newsmax: You have a wonderful sense of humor. Reagan understood the power of humor. As Americans, it’s part of our ethos that we can laugh during difficult times. That comes across in your new book.

Beck: Sure. It’s got all kinds of laughs in it and all kinds of, I’m riddled with ADD, so it was made with that, but I wanted you to pick it up and look at that picture and go, That son of a . . . and look at it. You know what I mean?

Read the magazine article now . . .

As originally published in Newsmax magazine.