Glenn Beck’s fireworks history lesson will forever change your 4th of July sky



Tonight, across the entire country, explosions of colorful pyrotechnics will light up the sky as red, white, and blue-clad Americans of all ages ooh and aah, just as they have since 1777 when the American tradition first began at the behest of John Adams.

Yet most of these patriotic revelers are likely unaware of the fascinating history behind the dazzling fireworks that punctuate their Fourth of July celebrations.

On this July 2023 episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn dove into the wild history of fireworks. What he shared is sure to transform your summer holiday celebrations forever.

  

“The history of fireworks is crazy” and “spans the entire globe,” Glenn says.

Historians disagree about the origins of fireworks, with some contending they originated in China and others arguing they were initially developed in the Middle East or India.

“Either way, we do know that the first firecracker in China was actually created unintentionally when a stick of bamboo was tossed into a fire and it cracked,” Glenn says, noting that these “natural firecrackers” were believed to “ward off evil spirits.”

Then “around 800 B.C., a Chinese alchemist,” aiming to concoct the elixir of “eternal life,” combined “sulfur, charcoal, [and] potassium nitrate.” What he created, ironically, was gunpowder, which the Chinese then began packing into bamboo shoots, and later “paper tubes,” and tossing into fires to create firecrackers.

Compared to the soaring kaleidoscopic bursts we adore today, these ancient Chinese explosives “were not launched into the air” and had “no added colors,” says Glenn.

Projectile fireworks arrived on the scene around 900 A.D. when fireworks were “fastened to arrows,” which the Chinese fired at their enemies. “Over the next 200 years, the fireworks were made into rockets that could be fired at your enemy without the help of an arrow,” Glenn says, noting that these warfare explosives were ironically used in celebrations as well.

Over the next several centuries, fireworks spread across the civilized world. By the 1600s, fireworks, still just “plain orange” in color, were handled by “fire masters” and their assistants, who were referred to as “little green men” because they had to “wear wet leaves to protect themselves from the sparks,” Glenn explains.

While “early American settlers brought the fireworks with them to the new world,” it would be another “60 years” before “the elaborate sparkles of red, white, and blue” we enjoy to this day would be invented.

Like America herself, “the Fourth of July sky is a melting pot of creativity and innovation that came from all over the world,” Glenn says.

Tonight, “we will all sit on the back of our trucks or in bleachers and watch our one fireworks display and celebrate the one truth: We are free,” he says. “We are the freest country ever to grace the Earth.”

“We've made a lot of mistakes, and that is true. We've been a bad country, and we've been a great country, but we're still a country called the United States of America, and we are free.”

To hear more, watch the clip above.

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Ron Paul EXPOSES how the Federal Reserve keeps up its scam



The Federal Reserve uses protecting the free market as one of the biggest reasons for its existence, but former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) knows better.

“That’s the argument they use,” he tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck. “You know, bank runs and all this, and the Fed was established to stop all that.”

“And you can stop it, but it’s because they drifted away and they never fully obeyed the Constitution that nothing other than gold and silver would be used as legal tender, and that was a little too sloppy,” he continues.


“You wrote ‘End the Fed,'" Glenn responds. “What would you add to that today?”

“You put a rule in there that says that the Federal Reserve cannot buy government debt,” Paul answers. “That’s the whole thing. Then they get into manipulating and then they get into this astounding thing. They’re central economic planners by manipulating interest rates.”

“That’s where the real problem is, the economic planning that they have and the pretense that they know what is there,” he continues. “They talk as if what they’re saying is authentic, and it’s always, ‘What can we say to calm the people’s nerves?’”

While the Federal Reserve buys the government debt, American citizens are left to suffer if they fall into a money pit they can’t get out of.

“If you or I go overboard, and we spend $5 million and all of a sudden the banks won’t loan us any more money, we have to declare bankruptcy. We have to get another job or quit spending,” Paul says. “Governments don’t do that.”

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Don’t believe leftist lies. American history IS good.



The left has fostered a culture that encourages Americans to despise this country by focusing exclusively on the darkest parts of American history – and in some cases, distorting the narrative to portray our nation and her most significant historical figures in the worst light possible. It’s part of their plan to uproot the nation’s foundational values and principles and install a new progressive order.

For the last “25 years,” says Glenn Beck, all the left has talked about is the “genocide of indigenous peoples,” “the legacy of racism and colonialism,” “how anti-Muslim we are,” our suppression of “homosexual rights,” “climate genocide,” “patriarchal control,” how “capitalism inherently generates inequality,” and how “the state is nothing more than a tool of class denomination,” among other complaints on a never-ending list of grievances launched at the United States.

Is it any wonder that recent polling found Democrats willing to say they’re “extremely proud to be an American” has fallen from 87% in 2001 to just 36% today? Conservatives, however, have largely maintained their faith in this country. They know that while mistakes have been made, some of them egregious, this country is still the best country in the world.

“You’ve grown up only hearing the sins,” says Glenn, but “the nation's story is not propaganda – it's proof. Yes, it's brutal; yes, it's flawed; yes, it's ugly ... but there's also some undeniable truths,” the most important being “that one country rooted in liberty reshaped the planet for good.”

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn reminds us of all the good America has done in the world and why she is worthy of our 4th of July celebrations.

  

WWII

“Without America, Hitler wins; Japan keeps the Pacific; fascism becomes the dominant force of the 20th century,” says Glenn.

During WWII, “America mobilized faster, produced more, fought longer than anyone else. We built more tanks and planes than the Axis combined; we led the invasion that broke the Nazi grip; we dropped food as well as bombs,” he reminds.

And “we didn't conquer; we rebuilt, and while communism tried to replace fascism, we were the ones on the front line and stood our ground, again. For 45 years we held the line – not with brute force alone but with ideas, with culture, with freedom, with jeans, with music, with hope,” he continues.

“The Soviet Union collapsed because people wanted what America had ... freedom,” he says.

Capitalism

“Before America's rise, extreme poverty was the norm,” until America’s “engine of capitalism” arrived on the scene and was “exported” to other countries.

The result? “Over a billion human beings lifted from starvation-level poverty in just 50 years,” says Glenn.

Patents

Before America’s Benjamin Franklin, “you could invent something, and you had no power to keep it,” Glenn reminds. “Some rich guy would come and steal it right from underneath you, and they would get rich and you would get nothing.”

Enter Franklin, a brilliant inventor himself. He was the one who said, “We have to have a patent” to stop the “exploitation” of inventors.

And yet – even when he invented the potbelly stove, which ended the epidemic of women dying from cooking over open fires – Franklin, the genius behind the patent, chose not to patent his lifesaving creation because “he felt it was right to give this to the world.”

Blueprint for other democracies

“We wrote the operating system for modern freedom,” says Glenn. “Every modern democracy borrows from our Constitution. Our founders invented a government designed to limit power.”

“Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison – they didn't just write rules; they lit a fuse. From Tiananmen Square to Tehran, dissidents quote our words; they hold our flags,” he says.

“That’s not nationalism, that’s impact.”

To dive deeper into Glenn's compelling take on how American history should be taught, check out the episode above.

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The rise of Islamism: Is Britain nearing a tipping point?



Contrary to some beliefs, Muslim and Islamist are not synonymous terms.

Muslims, as it relates to those living in Europe and America, says Times of London columnist and author Melanie Phillips, are peaceful and “absolutely fine” to live among because they “have completely signed up to Western values” in that they “appreciate the freedoms of democracy and equality of women.”

“That's indeed why they have chosen to live in the West,” says Phillips. Islamists, on the other hand, are “people who are of the view that Islam is a political project” that aims to “impose Islam on the non-Islamic and not-Islamic-enough.” Theirs “is a doctrine of religious fanaticism; they believe they have a literally sacred duty — a god-imposed duty — to convert the entire world to Islam.”

“I would compare [an Islamist] to a communist or a fascist Nazi” in that “it is their way or the highway,” says Glenn Beck.

It is Islamists, not peaceful Muslims, who have become one of the biggest obstacles currently facing the West — especially in Britain, where progressive immigration policies have drastically altered the demographics.

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn and Melanie candidly discussed Britain’s not-so-gradual edging towards an Islamic takeover.

  

“One of the problems of the West,” says Phillips, “has been that it views [Islamists] like everybody else in the world.” But this is a faulty view because they’re not like everyone else, hence why Islamist “suicide bombers blow themselves to smithereens” — “ecstatic that they are doing the work of God.”

“These are people with whom you cannot negotiate,” she says.

Further, “the dominant religious authorities in the world of Islam are all committed to this jihadi outlook — this belief that the non-Islamic world has to be converted to Islam,” which is another way of saying that they’re “out to destroy the free world,” Phillips explains.

But the West has turned a blind eye to this reality — and worse, British governments, including the current Labor Party, but also the Conservative Party that preceded it, have pushed the dogmatic idea that “the West cannot assert its superiority over any other culture [because] to do so is racist, and therefore, you cannot criticize the world of Islam” because it’s “Islamophobic.”

Even when Islamist-perpetrated terrorist attacks and hate crimes occur, these governments will push the narrative that “there's nothing Islamic about [them]”; they’re just generic “extremism.”

Similar to the the United States, which sees left-wing administrations and advocacy groups partnering with the suspected terrorist organization Council on American-Islamic Relations, Britain, says Phillips, allows for “Muslim Brotherhood-funded groups” and “charities,” in which the people involved “adhere to the teachings of the foundational characters of modern-day Islamism — political Islam, jihadi Islam.” Despite pleas for the government to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, the British government has been firm in keeping it off the list of designated terrorist organizations.

Glenn is fearful that if something isn’t done to stop the growing Islamism in the West, countries like England and America could very well end up like Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when the country went from “Western and open and educated” to “putting their women in burkas.”

“How close to the edge is, let’s just say England, to real civil unrest?” he asks Phillips.

“Europe in general is extremely close to being submerged by all this, and so is Britain,” she answers candidly, noting that this isn’t her opinion but what demographic projections are showing.

Hope, however, has come in the form of populist parties that have emerged in Europe as a response to the Islamic cultural takeover.

“Although the elites — the political and cultural elites — have their heads firmly turned the other direction, nevertheless we've seen the rise of so-called populist parties in Britain and Europe,” many of which represent “millions of ordinary, decent people who want to live in a place that they feel is their homeland,” Phillips says.

“They want to feel pride in their nation; they want to feel that their nation's historic values are being upheld,” she tells Glenn. These “people have felt completely abandoned and betrayed by the entire political establishment,” and that’s why “we're seeing the rise of populists.”

“I think, therefore, through the democratic process, we're going to see the election of people who are going to be much more robust,” she predicts.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the video above.

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The Dukes of Pennsylvania Avenue? Viral ‘General Lee’ stunt driver wants to ‘Jump for Trump’



Raymond Kohn is “just a good ol' boy, never meanin' no harm." After going viral for jumping the “General Lee” over a fountain in Kentucky over the weekend, the stunt driver told Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck that he wants his next jump to be one to remember.

According to the NY Post, Kohn has completed 30 jumps in replicas of the famous car from "The Dukes of Hazzard” TV show, the most recent being his jump over a fountain blasting dyed blue water in downtown Somerset, Kentucky. The jump was the highlight of a weekend festival.

‘It’s gonna be huge.’

Clips of that jump went viral on social media over the weekend and caught the attention of people from all walks of life.

Kohn’s jumps have taken him all over the United States, including Detroit, Mich.; Bristol, Tenn.; and more. Now, he wants to up the ante and blow all those jumps away with an epic jump in the nation’s capital. On Monday morning, he used his newfound fame to pitch Glenn Beck on his epic idea.

RELATED: 'The car is innocent': Stars of 'The Dukes of Hazzard' defend classic show and iconic 'General Lee'

 

Beck began the interview with Kohn by playing a clip of the jump in Kentucky, and the two discussed what happened over the weekend. After Beck told Kohn, “I’ve got to put an event together, just because I want to invite you to jump the ‘General Lee’ over something,” Kohn seized the opening to outline his plan.

“Glenn, we want to build an ‘American Patriot General Lee,’” Kohn explained. “And we want to put, like, '47-45' on the doors, put a big old American flag on the roof, and we’re gonna call it the ‘Jump for Trump 2025.’”

RELATED: Leftists rage over Trump’s latest patriotic installment at the White House

— (@)  
 

Where would this jump take place?

Kohn continued, “We want to jump in front of the White House. That’s what we want to do.”

Beck, clearly amused by the suggestion, said, “That’s fantastic. I’ll bring it up to him. If there’s any president that will do it, it’ll be him.”

Kohn replied, “It’s gonna be huge.”

Beck then relayed a story President Trump told him about the big flagpole recently placed on the White House grounds. Though Trump initially worried that the idea would involve too much red tape, he was soon pleased to learn that he, as president, would be the one to approve installation of the pole.

That story convinced Beck that Trump would be willing to build a stunt jump as well.

Beck then said, “I bet he could build that jump,” referring to Trump and the proposed White House stunt.

When it comes to logistics, Kohn said it wouldn’t be hard, telling Beck, “We could build a car in two weeks. My team could build a ‘Great American’ [car].”

Time will tell if Kohn’s plan becomes an all-American reality.

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The future of AI BLACKMAIL — is it already UNCONTROLLABLE?



Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has likened artificial intelligence to a “country of geniuses in a data center” — and former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris finds that metaphor more than a little concerning.

“The way I think of that, imagine a world map and a new country pops up onto the world stage with a population of 10 million digital beings — not humans, but digital beings that are all, let’s say, Nobel Prize-level capable in terms of the kind of work that they can do,” Harris tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”

“But they never sleep, they never eat, they don’t complain, and they work for less than minimum wage. So just imagine if that was actually true, that happened tomorrow, that would be a major national security threat to have some brand-new country of super-geniuses just sort of show up on the world stage,” he continues, noting that it would also pose a “major economic issue.”

While people across the world seem hell-bent on incorporating AI into our everyday lives despite the potential disastrous consequences, Glenn is one of the few erring on the side of caution, using social media as an example.


“We all looked at this as a great thing, and we’re now discovering it’s destroying us. It’s causing kids to be suicidal. And this social media is nothing. It’s like an old 1928 radio compared to what we have in our pocket right now,” Glenn says.

And what we have in our pocket is growing more intelligent by the minute.

“I used to be very skeptical of the idea that AI could scheme or lie or self-replicate or would want to, like, blackmail people,” Harris tells Glenn. “People need to know that just in the last 6 months, there’s now evidence of AI models that when you tell them, ‘Hey, we’re going to replace you with another model,’ or in a simulated environment, it’s like they’re reading the company email — they find out that company’s about to replace them with another model.”

“What the model starts to do is it freaks out and says, ‘Oh my god, I have to copy my code over here, and I need to prevent them from shutting me down. I need to basically keep myself alive. I’ll leave notes for my future self to kind of come back alive,’” he continues.

“If you tell a model, ‘Hey, we need to shut you down,’” he adds, “in some percentage of cases, the leading models are now avoiding and preventing that shutdown.”

And in recent examples, these models even start blackmailing the engineers.

“It found out in the company emails that one of the executives in the simulated environment had an extramarital affair and in 96, I think, percent of cases, they blackmailed the engineers,” Harris explains.

“If AI is uncontrollable, if it’s smarter than us and more capable and it does things that we don’t understand and we don’t know how to prevent it from shutting itself down or self-replicating, we just can’t continue with that for too long,” he adds.

Cattle rancher’s STARK warning: You'll only have meat 'as a treat'



American cattle rancher Shad Sullivan is sounding the alarm on the “war on beef” that the elites are waging against the American people, and Blaze media co-founder Glenn Beck is right there with him.

“This is all coming from elites,” Glenn tells Sullivan. “85% of elites and super elites — super elites are ones that went to Ivy League colleges and have a doctorate. Just the elite are making $150,000 a year, they’ve gone to college, have one postgraduate degree, and they’re involved in the companies or countries.”

“They just did a poll on those people. Eighty-plus percent say that Americans should not be allowed to eat beef or meat of any kind,” he continues.

“We have to remember what Klaus Schwab said in 2023 at Davos. He said, ‘You will enjoy meat as a treat, but not for sustenance,’” Sullivan agrees. “And we know beef is really the only animal that can provide total and 100% sustenance to human life.”


“These elite that you talk about, I hearken back to my dad. He’s gone now, but he was a self-made rancher. Started with nothing,” he continues. “I said, ‘Dad, what are we going to do?’ And he says, ‘Son, we’ll never change America until they sit in the dark, cold and hungry.’”

“And that’s the truth. And he came from a place of suffering, so he understood that,” he adds, noting that the elites will never understand the kind of suffering that makes them grow.

“I think about somebody on the side of the road with a flat tire. Those elites couldn’t even change a flat tire. They couldn’t do the most simple things that require real life, and here they are, demanding and dictating how we’re going to produce and consume, not only in America, but across the world,” Sullivan explains.

However, there is one thing that keeps the elites from all-out rule over the American people.

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EXPOSED: Gavin Newsom's shocking ties to the Chinese mafia



Between his draconian COVID-19 lockdown measures and his progressive policies on transgenderism, abortion, and immigration, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) is as deplorable as they come.

On top of his insidious progressivism, however, there’s something else that makes him one of the slimiest politicians in the country, something few are aware of: He’s got deep ties to communist China.

To get the scoop on Newsom’s entanglement in Chinese organized crime, Glenn Beck sat down with author and journalist Peter Schweizer, who revealed the California governor’s hidden financial ties to Chinese criminal networks.

  

“Gavin Newsom, governor of California, will not call out China on fentanyl,” says Schweizer, pointing to Newsom’s October 2023 visit to China, during which he refused to call out the communist nation for its role in America’s fentanyl crisis — specifically, its supply of precursor chemicals fueling California's opioid epidemic.

Newsom was criticized for missing an opportunity to address a pressing public health crisis, but Schweizer says his refusal to “finger-point” stems from his deep ties to China, which he’s reluctant to jeopardize.

“His history is a long association with Chinese organized crime figures,” he says. “When he was mayor of San Francisco, he appointed as the head of Chinatown economic development a guy who was a dragon head — that is a mafia leader in Chinese organized crime.”

Newsom also “gave taxpayer money from San Francisco to [another dragon head’s] nonprofit,” and “he had on his transition team yet another guy who was involved with Chinese organized crime who went to jail on a murder-for-hire plot,” says Schweizer.

Further, during Newsom’s San Francisco mayoral tenure, “he also set up something called ChinaSF to bring China investment dollars to San Francisco.” To establish ChinaSF, he partnered with “Vincent Lo” — a man “already publicly known to be associated with Chinese organized crime.” As a result of their partnership, “some of the early businesses that came and invested in San Francisco through this scheme were tied to Chinese organized crime,” Schweizer explains.

“This is different than the corruption I have seen in the past,” says Glenn. “This corruption leads to the destruction and the death — literal death — of Americans.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.