Glenn Beck - The Overton Window

“Have you registered a firearm? You’re on a list! Have you made a political contribution to a third-party candidate? You’re on a list! Have you visited my website? You’re on a list! Have you given a speech about government lists to a rowdy group of patriots? You’re on a list!

“But who needs a list when they can monitor you whenever they want? You’ve all heard of that ‘Digital Angel’ device that can be implanted under your skin, right? They say it’s to store medical information and for the safety of children and Alzheimer’s patients.”

At that, the crowd began to boo and hiss.

“Now, now… maybe for once they are being honest with us, but you know what? It doesn’t matter! ‘Digital Angel’ is a Red Herring. We’re all busy worrying about implantable chips as we’re standing in line to buy the next iPhone or BlackBerry. Read the fine print, people! They don’t need to sell new technologies to track us, we’re eagerly signing up for the old ones!

“Oh, and this just in, thanks to our friends on the Internet-a place where, at least for now, we can track them as easily as they can track us.”

Noah felt his face getting hot. In Bailey’s hand was a printout of the leaked government memorandum from that afternoon meeting at the office, the one he’d spent his entire morning trying to nullify. It was effectively harmless now, it was a nonissue, and he repeated that to himself, but the smug look coming from the guy onstage had already gotten under his skin.

“… if you speak out against abortion,” Bailey continued, reading from the memo, “are a returning veteran, are a defender of the Second Amendment, oppose illegal immigration, are a homeschooler, if you’ve got a bumper sticker on your car that says ‘Chuck Baldwin for President’ or, heaven help us, if you’re found to be in possession of a copy of the U.S. Constitution, then you good American patriots, you moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas, you guardians of liberty are to be approached with extreme caution and guns at the ready, because you may be a terrorist!”

The overall tone of the crowd’s response had been taking a decided turn for the worse. It wasn’t everybody who was into this line of rhetoric, maybe only a vocal ten percent or so. And while this minority wasn’t quite to the torches-and-pitchforks line yet, they didn’t have too much farther to go.

“But wait now, just wait. So they’ve got us all on a list, but it’s not like they’re gonna pick us up and send us to a concentration camp out of the blue, right? That could happen only if there’s something they can blame on us, some sort of a big emergency. So who decides if and when we’re in that kind of a crisis? The Congress, maybe? The same toothless Congress that hasn’t actually declared a war on any of the seventy countries where we’ve sent our young men and women to fight and die since 1945? The same Congress that hasn’t even been allowed to read most of the Orwellian continuity-of-government provisions put in place since the 1980s?

“No, the Congress doesn’t decide.” Bailey held up another document. “It’s much worse than that. Since Presidential Decision Directive number fifty-one, it’s official. The president decides. The duly selected president takes control of the whole enchilada, what they call in Presidential Decision Directive number sixty-seven ‘the Enduring Constitutional Government.’ On his command the U.S.A. becomes the ECG, and it stays that way until our new benevolent emperor decides the coast is clear again. The truth is that it could happen anytime they want. In case you don’t know it, the powers that be have kept this country in an official, continuous state of national emergency almost every day since 1933.

“Do you realize that if you live within a hundred miles of a coastline or a U.S. border you’re in what they call a ‘Constitution Free Zone,’ where the entire Bill of Rights can disappear in a heartbeat? That’s not me talking, that’s the ACLU. Two-thirds of us live in that zone; that’s two hundred million American citizens. Do you know that tonight, in this very city, our kind leaders have set up what they call a ‘Free Speech Zone’ where we’re allowed to exercise our First Amendment rights, but it’s way uptown in a fenced-off parking lot where our rulers and the media don’t have to be distracted by what we have to say.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I hereby declare this spot where I’m standing now, and every single square inch of this great land from sea to shining sea, according to the unalienable rights and powers endowed to me by my Creator, to be a Free Speech Zone!”

Noah had to catch his beer glass before it tipped over as his table was jostled by the nearby revelers. They were already clapping as loudly as they could and were now on the verge of getting physical in their reactions. From the stage, Danny Bailey indicated that he wanted to be heard again.

“It looks bad, I know it does,” Bailey began. “But do you know why we’re going to beat them? We’re going to beat them because once the truth gets out there’ll be no stopping it. When enough people wake up they’ll have no choice but to come out of the shadows and fight, and then we’ve got them. Remember what a great man once told us: First they ignore you-then they ridicule you-then they fight you-”

“And then they win,” Noah said.

It was one of those nightmare moments, like when you dream about showing up to ninth-grade homeroom without your pants. Just as he’d spoken those four words, out loud but only to himself, the entire room had gone dead quiet in anticipation of Bailey’s big triumphant finish. And by some cruel trick of acoustics, Noah’s sarcastic twist of that Gandhi quote seemed to have carried to every ear in the room.

For an eternal few seconds, Noah held out hope that Danny Bailey would blow right past the interruption, but it just wasn’t that kind of a night. Noah stole a glance upward and found himself the sole focus of attention from the man onstage.

“Well, well, well.” Bailey moved to the edge of the platform so they were facing each other. “Looks like we’ve got a junior ambassador from the Ivy League among us.”

Noah kept his eyes fixed squarely on his beer glass, but Bailey wasn’t going to let it rest.

“Come on up here, Harvard, don’t keep us hanging. If you’ve got so much to say, just dumb it down so all of us hicks can understand it, and then have the guts to say it loud enough so everybody can hear. I doubt if you can tell us much about the Constitution or the Founding Fathers, but maybe you can enlighten us with a little racist, communist wisdom from a real hero… like Che Guevara.”

Noah looked up at him. “No thanks.”

“Oh, but I won’t take no for an answer.” Bailey turned to the crowd. “You folks won’t either, will you?”

Angry applause filled the room along with taunts and chants. It finally became too much to sit and take.

“Fine,” Noah said. He finished off what remained of his latest beer, stood, and allowed himself to be fairly manhandled up onto the platform and under the lights. Bailey moved aside from the floor mike with a be-my-guest sweep of the arm.

“I want to start off by saying,” Noah began, adjusting his voice to make the most of the sound system, “that because of my job I’m in a unique position to know for certain that most of what’s been said here tonight is absolutely true.”

The crowd quieted down considerably upon hearing this, as he’d assumed they would.

“Let me see if I can confirm some of the speculation from earlier speakers… The Federal Reserve isn’t federal at all: you’re right, it’s basically a privately owned bank, a cartel that loans you your own money at interest, and its creation was the beginning of the end of the free-market system.