Rabbi Daniel Lapin was talking with Glenn Beck on radio, the third hour Thursday morning. It was a conversation worth hearing, about deep ideas.
Let’s start with a definition of a religion, because that’s
key to understanding some of the later comparisons. In the quotes of the
transcript, I’ll refer to DL (Daniel Lapin) and GB (Glenn Beck).
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| Glenn Beck (left) and Rabbi Daniel Lapin screenshot from here (subscription may be required) |
DL: What it is that distinguishes a religion from, you
know, a model railroad society, if you like, is that a religion has to tackle
and answer the three basic questions, the fundamental questions. You know, if
you’ve got an inquisitive kid sitting next to you on an airplane, the kids asks
the three fundamental questions: where are you from, where you’re going, and
what do you do?
Having established that, he takes on the first question for
a comparison between his religious view and something more pagan.
DL: So, where are we from? How did human beings,
capable of moving from being land bound creatures in 1902 to 2019 when we’ve
got 10,000 airplanes in the air at any given moment. Anybody who remains an
atheist in contemplating the fact that it’s not otters or beavers or camels or
cows or kangaroos that have achieved this. It’s a being touched by the finger
of God—a creature called human beings, made this leap into the air. We’re
extraordinary creatures. But how did we get to this planet? And, as far as we
know in the moment, uniquely in this vast empty universe? We’ve got to answer
the question of how we got here.
And I answer that, that a God created us in His image and put
us here. My answer is quick, brief, and simple. And nonprovable, by the way.
The religion of secular fundamentalism, which I think is a
better term than—you’re right; I withdraw atheist—secular fundamentalism is the
official state religion of America. But why are they a religion? Because they
answer that question. They say, by a lengthy process of unaided materialistic
evolution, primitive protoplasm turned into bookkeepers and ballerinas. That’s
what happened. Now, that’s not provable either. But it’s a belief.
He planned to go on to the second big question. But Glenn detoured
him with a question about heresy. Fundamentalists of a religion cannot
withstand heresy. As Rabbi Lapin says, “leftism” in America is a religion of secular
fundamentalism.
DL: And that’s what it is, because otherwise there’s
no way to explain why a group of gray-haired old ladies in on the upper east
side of New York have to file a lawsuit against a Louisiana parish for teaching
creationism. What they are doing is just what the Moslems did when they invaded
the Iberian Peninsula in the 7th Century—basically demolish the
Catholic churches and turn them into mosques. You cannot withstand heresy, if
you are a devoted believer in your faith. And right there in front of you,
right there in your face, somebody is committing heresy, you kill ‘em. And so,
what is the connection between a group of ladies on the upper east side of New
York and a Louisiana parish? The Louisiana parish has the audacity to violate their
belief system—that we are here through a process of lengthy unaided
materialistic evolution—by daring to teach creationism. Well, of course that’s
outrageous.
He talks about the two cultures occupying the same real
estate. And later in the discussion this comes up again. Glenn quotes from a 19th
Century Librarian of Congress wrote at the behest of Congress. There’s also an
illustration of a map of the United States, with trees, one bent and gnarled
running into the South, representing slavery, and the other is very straight
and runs across the North, representing the blessing of liberty. (I’m not
always sure where Glenn is quoting, but I’ve tried to put those portions in
quotes to differentiate.)
GB: It says, “This map represents those colonies by
two trees, whose striking contrast will be apparent to the most superficial
observer. But not more, though, than the historic facts that make them appear.
The student of history here can see at a glance that it would require him years
of hard study to glean from textbooks, and many will see the moral of this
subject here for the first time. It’s said that history repeats itself. We do
not claim that it does, but there is a similarity between the first colony of
the Old World and the first colonies of the New World.” The first colony of the
Old World—what would you say that is? The first colony of the Old World?
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| Glenn Beck talks about the two trees described by the Librarian of Congress screenshot from here (subscription may be required) |
DL: Garden of Eden?
GB: Yeah. And I would never have thought of it that
way. I thought that was interesting. “The first colony of the Old World was
established in the Garden of Eden, where good and evil existed, and the evil
caused the downfall of man. So it was in the New World. Good and evil came here
also. Good to Plymouth, bad to Jamestown. As the tree which bore the forbidden
fruit caused the curse to be brought upon man in Eden, so did the tree of
slavery Jamestown. There was constant warfare in the Old World between good and
evil, and there has been in the New World. The evil of Jamestown has always
been, and to this day, at war with the good of Plymouth. Much of the trouble in
the New World was caused this way.
In 1620 each colony planted a tree, the tree of liberty, then
quite small, was planted by the Pilgrims upon the Bible at Plymouth, where it
receives God’s blessings, which accounts for its wonderful growth. The tree of
slavery was brought from the Old World, and the people of Jamestown also
planted this tree.”
It goes on to compare Lincoln to Father Abraham, who cuts
down the tree of slavery.
I’m interested in the history repeating itself concept.
Glenn and Rabbi Lapin talk about it as, not necessarily a repeat of events, but
a repeat of spiritual beliefs that tend to play out the same way.
The discussing began with Glenn asking about a Fox News
reporter who got fired recently for saying that, if the Democrats are claiming
to believe in God, he didn’t recognize their God. “I think it’s more like Baal,”
he had said. And got fired for that. But Glenn thinks he’s right. That led to
discussing the definition of religion.
But later they talk about parallels between ancient pagan
religions and what we see today. And it’s very uncivilized.
GB: OK. The reason why I say that I think this guy
from Fox was actually onto something is not that they knowingly are
worshiping. But we are unknowingly doing all of the same things their
worshipers did. Can you go into that?
DL: Sure. Yes, certainly. One of the outstanding
characteristics of both Moloch and Baal—and you’ve spoken about this many times;
I’ve heard you—is that they used to sacrifice their kids. Now you’ve got a
little bit of this as well among the Egyptians, during the pharaoh time. But,
in practice, this worship means that you sacrifice your children as a way of
expressing your fealty to this.
Well, how you do it and the reasons you do it are probably
not that important. But we do it here.
In other words, right now in America there are two cultures.
And you can find some of the nicest small towns in America which are basically
governed and shaped by those who worship the big G of God. And then you’ve got
cities like New York and Detroit and Baltimore and Newark, and many many other
cities today, on the west coast, California particularly, that are run by those
who worship something else entirely.
Now, where are the lives of young males sacrificed? It’s
clear.
GB: Where?
DL: In these cities that are run by secular
fundamentalism, young men in disproportionate numbers end up in the criminal
justice system and in jail. Their lives are sacrificed completely. And that is
an exact fulfillment. In other words, “What we do is so important that we don’t
care if it costs the lives of our sons.” And that is what the culture is
saying. We are so devoted to a lifestyle with absolutely no divine restraints.
‘Cause, after all, what has held Western Civilization
together for centuries is really the essential rituals and restraints and rules
of religion. We want to toss all of that out. None of that holds. We want to do
whatever we choose to sexually, and we want to do whatever we choose to
financially, which usually means taking it away from those who have created it
and bestowing it upon those who are living multi-generational dysfunctionality.
So, as long as we can do the things we want to do, the fact
that our sons end up dead and in jail—that’s just a fair price to pay. If you’re
a believer in Baal or secular fundamentalism, that’s a deal with the devil you
absolutely make. And you can see it. Just look at America.
GB: You’re also sacrificing your newborns, which they
did.
DL: Absolutely.
GB: To be a follower, you had to have orgies and sex,
get pregnant, and then you would return and sacrifice your newborn and
celebrate, literally celebrate the death of that child. And that’s what we’re
seeing with people who are touting Planned Parenthood.
DL: And if you think about it, it’s the most
unbelievably selfish lifestyle. What you’re saying is, “I want to do whatever I
darned well choose to, and if the next generation has to pay for it with their
lives, so be it.”
What we’re seeing, Rabbi Lapin says, is what we see whenever
societies follow this pattern.
DL: Because, in primitive societies—and all societies
are stripped of faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob eventually
devolve into primitivism. And we see that, by the way, today also with
piercings, body piercings going on, very indistinguishable from the cannibals
of New Guinea of a hundred years ago. Body piercing is an expression of
primitivism and tribalism. And, when you strip away Biblical Judeo-Christian
values, then automatically we devolve down into that.
There was another gross detail of paganism that is reappearing:
feces. It happened during Occupy Wall Street. It’s showing up in city streets
wherever homeless are allowed to live on the streets. In cities that used to be
beautiful, but now they’re unsafe, stinking, and disease-ridden. And they’re
all led by secular fundamentalists.
He said he’d been told over the years by law enforcement
officers that, when homes were broken into in very wealthy neighborhoods near Los
Angeles—well, I’ll use his words:
DL: They would tell me what the scene of a break-in sometimes
looked like. When they had come to a place that had been robbed, usually on the
west side of Los Angeles—Brentwood, Santa Monica, Beverley Hills, Beverlywood—in
those upscale areas, when those houses were broken into, they almost invariably
discovered that those who broke in had left a fecal business card behind,
usually on the living room carpet. That’s what they did.
People who didn’t work for their wealth, but wanted to live
off others—like slaveholders, expressed their contempt by defecating in the
homes they broke into. And he added,
DL: We’ll also find that in low-grade street language, one of
the worst invectives you can hurl at somebody also has to do with that part of
the anatomy.
So, this is very primitive. This is very basic. This is
basically toddlers who are 30 and 40 years old, still acting like toddlers.
Baal is central to that.
We tend to think of people in our day as too sophisticated,
to “evolved,” to fall for pagan worship; they’re not likely to call their god
Baal, or even recognize what they do as their form of worship.
But without God, our loving creator, who defines good, and
requires that we value life, family, truth, and property rights, there can be
no civilization.
We are, again, at a point of repeating history. There was
Cain against Abel. There was a civil war in ancient Israel between the north
and south, over moral issues. There was the dichotomy between Jamestown, with slavery,
and Plymouth, with the biblical blueprint for how to grow a civilized nation. There
was our American Civil War between North and South, over moral issues—specifically,
slavery. And today there is a split between people with Judeo-Christian values
(including non-believers who nevertheless live by these values) and those who
throw out those values and live by a creed of, as Rabbi Lapin puts it,
DL: We want to do whatever we choose to sexually, and
we want to do whatever we choose to financially, which usually means taking it
away from those who have created it and bestowing it upon those who are living
multi-generational dysfunctionality.
In the Spherical Model, that dichotomy is also north (freedom,
prosperity, and civilization) versus south (tyranny, poverty, and savagery).
It's not true, Rabbi Lapin says, that violence never solves anything. Violence usually solves difference. He
doesn’t advocate that; he’s for solving them with the ballot box. But doing
nothing allows the problems to continue festering. Not good news. And there’s
no good non-apocalyptic future he’s laying out here. No one is willing to
budge. He asks Glenn,
DL: Are you ready to crawl into your cave and say surrender?
I don’t think so.
GB: No, I won’t. No, I won’t.
DL: And neither is the other side. I wish I could sing
a lullaby and make everything good, but our job is not to massage people with
warm butter; it’s to tell the truth.
As long as we love God—and the freedom, prosperity, and
civilization that come from following His guidance—as much as the secular
fundamentalists love their god—which brings slavery, poverty, and savagery—then
telling the truth is what we must keep doing.
