We Surround Them Cincinnati

"...So here are the twelve values, and we'll go over these a little bit at a time, but the twelve values are honesty. The problem is we don't have any trust for one another anymore. Bernie Madoff, the banks, the politics, there's no honesty. We must mean what we say and say what we mean. As individuals, never let anyone -- make a vow today. You will never let anyone doubt your word. Believe me, it is going to take you a very long time to change that. I have been trying since 1996 and people still doubt my word from time to time if they don't know me. That's okay. I understand that. Mean what you say and say what you mean.

Reverence. Reverence. Why reverence? The lack of reverence causes a brashness, a coarseness, a noise in our society. Reverence has -- a lack of reverence has us watching the cakes and the circuses. Quick! Reverence to me means quiet, reflective, be still, listen, ponder. In our society we have not given any time to something that's extraordinarily important. Reverence. Silence. Ponder.

Hope. A lot of people say that I don't have a lot of hope. I do. The opposite of hope is death, destruction, despair, but hope is just a belief in the potential, just a belief in America's promise. But you have to know what that promise is. You have to know what America is. That goes back to the nine values -- the nine principles. Get the nine principles. You know who you are, you know what America. That's where your hope comes from. There will be a brighter tomorrow. It's what helps a single mom get up every day: Hope.

Thrift. We've become a disposable society, everything. How many times do your kids just have a toy and drop it? How many times have your kids said this to you? My kids have: Oh, well, I broke it; we'll get another one. I started saying about a year ago, "No, we won't. We'll fix it and if it can't be fixed, then we don't have another one." "What?" If we just understood thrift and life isn't disposable, how would we change our policies on life? How would we change our policies on the Earth? These are things that we could all agree on. Nobody wants the Earth to die. Nobody wants the Earth to be 1,000 degrees. Nobody wants that. Just thrift. Just understand that nothing is disposable, from people to things to the planet to the individual.

Humility. Opposite is an empire building, empire builder: "We're the empire! We're America!" Humility. It's the opposite of what we've learned from Wall Street. It's the opposite of what we have from Paris Hilton and the Prada purses, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. A humble society doesn't have a Prada purse with a little dog. They never say, "Well, we know better." If we're humble, we can find the real true us, flaws and all. We're willing to look at the "Us."

Charity, I think the opposite of charity is socialism. It's greed. But we've tried to force charity down. Charity is not socialism and socialism is not charity. Charity is about us as individuals. We care. We want to change our heart. Government's not charity. Charity's not patriotic. Pure charity is to be god-like. We lose our focus on ourself and worry about others.

Sincerity. Just live what you believe. Obama wants us to be more charitable. Joe Biden wants us to be more charitable. Joe Biden's never paid more than .8% of his income to charity. Obama just started to do it when he was running for president, and he's giving, what, 7% of his salary? Good for him. Now when nobody's watching Barack Obama, when you're long past the time that you were president, will you still be giving? I'm going to -- I'll say yes. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that, yes, you'll still be giving. But that's what sincerity really truly is all about. Be sincere. Live what you believe.

The next one is moderation. Moderation. Moderation in everything is good. By the way, a lot of these came from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. These are the things they looked at. This list like this they looked at every single day. Moderation. Benjamin Franklin said I'm not going to eat too much and I'm not going to drink too much. But really it's bigger than that. It's moderating our passions. You know, just moderate your passions. That's okay to do a little of everything. I'm an alcoholic. I can't do a little of things. So I don't do any of them. But moderate your passions. It's good to prepare for things. It would be bad for you to be living in a fallout shelter right now. But prepare. You do little things. You just stay aware. Moderation.

Hard work. I think we are being led right into a place, you know where the work ethic in America really changed was with the New Deal. Historians will tell you now that that was a pivot point in America. People worked hard. Well, you know what? If you're dependent -- the opposite of hard work is dependence. If you are dependent, you'll eventually be a slave. You lower your self-esteem. You limit your growth. But if you have hard work, you are growing, you're independent, you have self-worth. You know your own capabilities. You're honest about yourself on your limitations. You have long-term thinking. When you're working hard, you're working toward something. That gives you hope.

Courage. You don't have courage if you don't stand up, you'll look the hand that feeds you, said Patrick Henry. The opposite is cowering, panic, fear. It eventually leads to slavery. If you don't stand up, you'll lick the hand that feeds you. But where does courage come from? I think it's from living the principles and the values, honesty, hope, humility, belief in God, knowing who you are, knowing what you believe, knowing how it ends, knowing how it began. I know that people will think that I'm crazy and that's fine, but I think we're living in difficult times, and I have pondered, how does this end. I have only truly prayed for guidance and courage to do the things that he would want me to do, to say the things that he would want me to say and in the end to have the courage not to falter, to have the courage to know what the truth is because I can face anything, you can face anything if you know who you are and what's important.

Personal responsibility. Everybody wants to put the responsibility on the Democrats or the Republicans or as I did yesterday, the Fed. But you know what? Personal responsibility, did I take out too much, did I do too much, should I have done that. Own up to your own things because that's the only way you'll change things. It's okay if you make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. It humbles us, and if we're honest with each other and honest with ourselves, we become stronger.

And the last one is friendship. We all know what friendship is, but how many real friends do we have? We're researching out now in virtual friendships and everything else. We need to expand our circle of friendship. We need to start trusting one another again. We need to start seeing our neighbors again. We need to -- have you considered that if things melted down who your neighbors are? Do you trust them? Do they trust you? Can you count on each other? Our grandparents counted on each other. They counted on the neighbor. They would bring each other pies and they would share what they had. They would help each other. A lot of people would look at that, "Oh, my gosh, he was talking about, oh, it's going to break down so bad that it's going to be..." that's a good thing. As much as I hated that little street that I wrote about in my book The Christmas Sweater that my grandparents lived on, as much as I hated that when I was a kid, I'd give my right arm to live on that street again where everybody knew each other, everybody worked together. It was like a big family on that little street. While I don't have to move there, why aren't all of our streets like that now? In time I believe they're going to become those streets again and many will say that's a bad thing. Many will avoid it and they will stand in the bar there in the Titanic and you will just quietly be there to say, "Come on, into the boat. It's going to be okay." And then we will all go to shore, put our lives back in order and build a better boat."

From: GlennBeck.com

We Surround Them Cincinnati

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Friday, February 13, 2009

We Surround Them Cincinnati

We Surround Them - Twelve Values

We Surround Them - The Nine Principles