Glenn Beck - The Original Argument: The Federalists’ Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beck, Glenn.

The original argument: the federalists case for the Constitution, adapted for the 21st century / Glenn Beck, with Joshua Charles.

p. cm.

1st Threshold Editions trade pbk. ed.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Constitutional historyUnited States. 2. Constitutional lawUnited States. 3. Federalist. I. Charles, Joshua. II. Title.

KF4541.B37 2011

342.7302'9dc22 2011017088

ISBN 978-1-4516-5061-7 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-4516-5062-4 (ebk.)

DEDICATIONS

GLENN:

To Joshua Charles and all the other young people in the world who accept the challenge to, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, question with boldness. They realize that Divine Providence is active in all of our lives and that we are all here for a reasonbut they also know that to find that reason and fulfill our potential we must break through the chains of ignorance and fear.

JOSHUA:

To my parents, who unceasingly taught me the one principle from which all other worthwhile principles come: to do good. And to all of those throughout my life who convinced me of the profound uniqueness of this country, along with the responsibility that naturally becomes the burden of all those who live here.

Preface by Joshua Charles
The Birth of a Book about the Birth of Our Nation:
How This Book Came to Be

Introduction by Glenn Beck
The Great American Experiment: A Users Guide

by Joshua Charles

CALLER: Do you think that with todays partisan politics on both sides of the aisle the Constitution would ever get signed today?

GLENN: Not today, because there are not people out there making the case for the Constitution. I mean, if you rewrote the Federalist Papers today and there was a real movement to get those Federalist Papers out, to show why the Constitution should be accepted, then yes, people would read it, they would consume it, and they might even renew our country.

The Glenn Beck Program , January 14, 2011

O ur Founders strongly believed that Divine Providence played a critical role in the birth of our country. Looking back on the great improbabilities and coincidences that colluded to put this book into your hands, Im forced to concede that it may have intervened here as well.

But Im getting ahead of myself. It wasnt long ago that I was majoring in piano performance at the University of Kansas. In other words, Im not exactly the type of person normally associated with writing a book about the Federalist Papers. But the beginning of this journey had nothing to do with the Federalist Papers, or books, or even America. It all began with a movie.

In the fall of 2009 I saw Amazing Grace, a film about the great British abolitionist and humanitarian William Wilberforce. I was inspired by Wilberforces courageous moral stand, and the sheer grit it took for him to fight for the cause of abolition over almost half a century. What an amazing lesson for someone living in twenty-first-century America, a land where morality is increasingly obscured by euphemism and political correctness.

I decided that I needed to know more about this man. Something about Wilberforce, something very compelling, kindled within me a desire to stand for something .

Within a few days of watching the movie, Id already finished reading two biographies of Wilberforce. Both were excellent, but the one by Eric Metaxas absolutely captivated me. It was in this book that I first learned that Wilberforce had written a book of his own: A Practical View of Christianity .

I picked up a copy and devoured it. It was a searing indictment of the religion of his day, yet full of love and grace, insight and brilliance. But I had one major problem with it: The writing style made for a very difficult reading experience. Instead of simply enjoying the book, I found myself spending half my time trying to untangle the elaborate language and Shakespearean vocabulary. I could barely understand, let alone enjoy, the words of my newfound hero. His message was impactful, but the reading experience was difficult.

Not long after I began grappling with Wilberforce, I had completed a second reading of the Federalist Papers and had felt a similar frustration trying to grasp what Publius was saying. Sure, parts of it were understandable, but just as with Wilberforce, the joy in reading them was drained by the archaic vocabulary and sentences that occasionally ran the entire page!

As all of this was going on with me personally, something else entirely was going on with America. Frustrated by decades of an overspending, overreaching, overbearing government, Americans were finally beginning to stand up. Regular people from every walk of life, every background, and every profession began to realize that they had given a pass to our politicians irresponsibility for far too long. The people asserted their rightful place in determining the course of their countryno matter how much that course diverged from the prevailing wisdom of the elites. There was a growing sense, a palpable feeling, that something had gone wrong in America, something that went beyond the current president, or the Democrats and Republicansand it was time to make it right.