America's Flirtation With Extremes

This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," March 2, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GLENN BECK, HOST: All Americans, I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat, you know something in your gut that something is very, very wrong and that we're being pushed by the fringes, left and right. But the economy — no matter what anyone tells you, our problems have just begun.

Now, there is hope, because I'm passionate about American history and making sure that you teach it — you know it and you teach it. This is a nation who has not been taught their own history.

For two reasons, we have to know history. One, we can look to the past to solve our problems. But we can also look to the past to remember who we are. If we don't, we're going to repeat it.

If you are — if you're a Bible-reading person, have you ever noticed the stories are essentially the same over and over and over again? They're slaves, they get free, they become rich, they destroy themselves. They're slaves, they free themselves, they get rich, they destroy themselves. Same thing.

If you don't read the Bible, read Gibbons, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Are you kidding me? It's like reading the newspaper today.

Those who do not know history are destined to repeat it.

Well, today, let's talk a little bit of history on why I say the progressives are the disease in this country, the threat to our system of government and our Constitution. That means that the progressives that are on the left and the right — not the ones, you know, Democrats or Republicans that are down here by our Constitution, by our Founders. The ones who are here. I don't care if it's, you know, the Republicans or the Democrats, but the ones that move on this scale — from freedom to total government.

Here we go with history. The year: 1939. The Democrats had the White House. There were two political thoughts that had been around now for a while. They were being tried in Europe, who, for first time in our history, we were trying to emulate. We're looking at Europe and saying, wow, we should be like them.

Even The New York Times and Time magazine — there's Time magazine — that's Mussolini. They're looking at him and saying, whoa, this guy has got it down. Even our own president looked to Mussolini and fascism and said this man may actually be a genius, this maybe the system of the future.

To a lesser extent, it was the same with Hitler but he kind of went bad a lot faster. But there was also another movement, progressive on the left looked to a new system being tried in the Soviet Union. And just like today, they were so willing to excuse of horrors of this new utopian system — to the extent that The New York Times sent a reporter over to the Soviet Union and of the massacre that we showed a couple of weeks ago on our documentary on the Ukraine, this reporter for The New York Times reported, quote, "You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet."

The Soviet Union killed 7 million people. Wow, that's some — that's some omelet, huh?

Both the communists, who are on the left, they say, you know, these are communists and the Nazis are on the right. That's what people say. But they both subscribe to one philosophy and they flew one banner: one had a hammer and sickle, the other was a swastika. But on each banner read the words here in America of this: "social justice."

They talked about economic justice, right of the workers, redistribution of wealth and surprisingly — I love this — democracy.

I started to show this to you last night. This is from a handbook from 1938. It's from Rhode Island describing democracy. Progress and democracy, it sounds great, doesn't it? I looked up democracy in the book and here's what it says.

"Democracy has always played an important role in history of Rhode Island. Time and again, the people of this state have repudiated attempts to nullify or curtail it. In 1938, we're again faced with proposition: Shall Democratic government continue in Rhode Island?

"We communists are ready to join with all liberty-loving people in defending democracy. Democracy is the rule of the majority. And it can only operate in Rhode Island as well as our Constitution permits it to operate. But our Constitution is now 100 years old and fast out-living its usefulness.

"Vote communist."

Got it?

These communists knew they couldn't win overnight. So they decided, the best course of action was to take progressive steps — little baby steps — towards their — what was it, the Van Jones — play the Van Jones clip. What did he call it?

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

VAN JONES, FORMER GREEN JOBS 'CZAR': One of the things that has happened, I think, too often to progressives is that we don't understand the relationship between minimum goals and maximum goals. Right now, we're saying we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to some kind of eco-capitalism where, you know, at least we're not, you know, fast-tracking destruction of a whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough. We want to go beyond the system of exploitation and oppression altogether. But that's a process.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BECK: Remember Van Jones — a modern day self-proclaimed anti- capitalist revolutionary communist. He's advising the president.

Did you know that that actually happened before? We had advisers in the White House, advising the president of the United States — communists served in the White House under FDR. This is before, you know, it wasn't cool to be a communist, before they had to call themselves progressives.

One of them was Alger Hiss.

Alger Hiss, he was an attorney who worked on several areas of the New Deal. But we'll let modern day communists tell you about the days of FDR — here it is, the bald communist:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JED BRANDT, BRECHT FORUM: And for a period, you had — communists had access to the White House during the FDR administration. And this was real. And when things switched around, they decided, that was not going to be allowed anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: OK. So communism was very popular in our grandparents' day. They just didn't tell us about it. Maybe they were embarrassed that didn't see all the death and destruction.

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