Glenn Beck Admits He Misled Cruz Audiences About George Washington’s ‘Don Quixote’

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by REBECCA MANSOUR25 Feb 20161,790

Glenn Beck has now admitted that he misled audiences at his campaign appearances for 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

97%

 when he told them the copy of Don Quixote he held in his hand was the same copy that George Washington purchased on the day the Constitution was signed. Beck now admits that the copy he was displaying at Cruz rallies was actuallyprinted in 1796 — 9 years after the Constitution was signed.

The controversy surrounding Beck’s book heated up earlier this week when a spokesperson at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate told the Huffington Post that the copy of Miguel de CervantesDon Quixote that Washington purchased on the day the Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, is “stored safely” in their collection and is not out on the campaign trail with Glenn Beck.

The curators even helpfully tweeted a photograph of the real copy Washington purchased on that historic day in 1787:

In the wake of the controversy, Beck hasfinally acknowledged that he misled audiences about his book:

In a statement to HuffPost, Beck acknowledged the book he’s displayed at rallies is not the copy of Don Quixotethat Washington purchased on that day. However, Beck said he possesses another copy of the book, dated 1796, from Washington’s library.

“The lesson that I take from Washington’s diary where he says ‘Signed the constitution. Bought Don Quixote’ is that we are never done in our service to God and Country,” Beck said. “I have incorrectly stated that my copy is the copy that Washington purchased the day he signed the Constitution. That version is one of the copies owned and housed in Mount Vernon. I take full responsibility for connecting my book (which is dated 1796) to the book Washington purchased that fateful day of September 17th, 1787. But make no mistake the copy in my possession is from the private library of George Washington.”

Experts at Mount Vernon noted that the ownership of the 1796 volume is complicated, and that it’s uncertain whether that later edition, owned by Beck, was in Washington’s library or was purchased by Washington as a gift for his friend Colonel Tobias Lear. The 1796 copy of Don Quixote was later passed down to Lear’s son, Benjamin, who identified it in records as having been received from Washington.

A Mount Vernon spokeswoman said it would need to see Beck’s copy in person to authenticate it.

It’s still unclear how Beck, a self-described Constitutionalist who prides himself on his knowledge of that period, could have thought that a book printed 9 years after the day the Constitution was signed was the copy Washington purchased on that historic date. But Beck clearly made this mistake repeatedly.

Beck repeatedly misled audiences about his copy of Don Quixote while stumping for Ted Cruz in Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada.

At a Cruz rally in Ames, Iowa, on January 30, Beck said that Washington wrote in his diary “two lines on the day of the signing of the Constitution. First line: ‘Signed the Constitution today.’ Second line: ‘I pick up my copy of Don Quixote.’ This is his copy ofDon Quixote that he picked up that day.”

At a rally at the Morningstar Church in Fort Mill, South Carolina, on February 11, Beck again declared, “This is the copy that he went and picked up the day they signed the Constitution.”

At a rally in Henderson, Nevada, on February 21, Beck again said, “This is George Washington’s copy of Don Quixote. This is the copy that he picked up the day they signed the Constitution.”

On his website, Beck posted the transcript of his Blaze TV appearance yesterday where he blasted the Huffington Post’s reporting on the book controversy as “the sloppiest journalism I have ever seen.”

“Now, I don’t think you care at all about rare book dealers,” Beck said. “But you know who does care? Me. And here’s why: Because people are now saying I’m dragging out a fake Washington book all around the country. And now they’re starting to question the Washington compass, which also has documentation.”

Beck added:

And, you know what, let me tell you something. I paid a fortune for these things. And these people who are printing these things are hurting the monetary value of those items. And they’re only trying to do it because it’s the same group of people that try to discredit any kind of history that is coming from a conservative. They have their own political motives for doing it.

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Bulldozing Monuments and the War on American History

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by JARRETT STEPMAN11 Jan 20161032

Editor’s Note: The following is a debate with Timothy Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation over the New Orleans City Council’s December 17, 2015 decision to remove four monuments relating to the Confederacy. Read Sandefur’s article here.

On December 17, the New Orleans City Council voted to remove four Confederate statues from the city, using obscure “nuisance” laws to strip these over 100-year-old historic monuments from their places of display. Mayor Mitch Landrieu said it was a “courageous decision to turn a page on our divisive past and chart the course for a more inclusive future.” Of course, the plan to remove the statues is itself divisive as a number of preservation organizations havefiled lawsuits to save the monuments.

The New Orleans statues to be removed are of General Robert E. Lee, General P.G.T. Beauregard, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The city will also remove an “obelisk dedicated to the Battle of Liberty Place” according to CNN. The Lee andBeauregard statues are on the National Register of Historic Places.

The most controversial of the monuments on the chopping block is the Battle of Liberty Place monument—dedicated to a Democratic white supremacist paramilitary group that fought the state and federal government during Reconstruction. But an adjacent commemoration was constructed in 1974, which states, “Although the ‘battle of Liberty Place’ and this monument are important parts of the New Orleans history, the sentiments in favor of white supremacy expressed thereon are contrary to the philosophy and beliefs of present-day New Orleans.”

There are times when it is acceptable for monuments to come down: Americans tore apart a statue of King George III during the Revolution, Lenin and Stalin statues were destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and most Americans today remember the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue during the second Iraq War. These were all revolutionary events in which an old regime was entirely replaced by a new one, a clean break with the past.

However, the war on Confederate monuments is part of the most recent effort by national activist groups to strip elements of American history deemed offensive and not in line with their current, ever-evolving political agenda. They wish to do more than create a new political order, and insist that the only way for the U.S. to move forward is by entirely erasing the past.

The anti-Confederate monument activists are not just setting their sights on the Confederacy, but American history as a whole—deep down they make little distinction between the Confederate founders and the Founding Fathers of the United States. There are plenty of reasons for critics–both contemporary and modern–to attack the Confederacy, especially theideas that were at its cornerstone. Yet neither the ideas nor the personal character of the monuments’ likenesses are particularly relevant in this crusade. All that matters is that they are currently politically incorrect.

Those who argue to remove the Lee and Davis statues, for instance, claim that the two illustrious men were traitors and not even from New Orleans, so the statues are inappropriate on those grounds. However, this is clearly not their real standard. The statue of Andrew Jackson is next on next on the agenda, yet Jackson saved New Orleans from British capture during the War of 1812 and was one of the staunchest unionists, known for his famous phrase, “Our federal union, it must be preserved!” He had deep ties to New Orleans and was the furthest thing from being a secessionist. But Jackson owned slaves and killed Indians in war, so he must be purged alongside Jefferson Davis. Similar arguments can be made about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and a never ending list of now unacceptable historical figures.

America doesn’t need a whitewashing of history, it needs a renewed commitment to the leaders and inspiring people, heralded and unheralded, who made this country what it is today–and an understanding of those who may have caused it harm. New monuments and reinterpretations of the past will undoubtedly arise, but this should not necessitate the bulldozing of priceless and irreplaceable works of art.

The current efforts to fundamentally transform history are fueled by people who believe America has been rotten since day one and want nothing less than total political and cultural revolution. It would be a travesty and a foreboding sign for America’s future if there is no attempt to preserve these monuments against the push of a temporary majority or—more accurately—an incredibly vocal and insistent minority.

In the last few years alone, leftist activists have been relentless and often successful in their pursuit of dismantling this country’s past in an attempt to recreate the nation in their own image. Amongst many other examples they have attempted to remove:Alexander Hamilton from the $10 bill, Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill, Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson from annual Democrat Party dinners, President William McKinley’s name from Mount McKinley, and even progressive forefather Woodrow Wilson’s name from Princeton University. And perhaps most disturbing of all is the effort to dig up Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from their graves in a park in Memphis, Tennessee. Even the dead are not allowed to rest.

For the modern Robespierres there is simply no difference between the ideas of Thomas Jefferson who wrote that “all men are created equal” and Confederate founders such as Alexander Stephens who claimed that “our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.”

Backers of the movement to eradicate the Confederate monuments in New Orleans claim it is an attempt to bring unity to the to the now mostly-black community, yet it does the exact opposite. As Ian Tuttle wrotein National Review, “The Left’s Confederate-eradication frenzy is not meant to promote healing or encourage dialogue but to enforce conformity,” he continued. “…the goal of folding up the Confederate battle flag — or discarding a bust or renaming a school — is not to facilitate racial unity by minimizing the visibility of potentially hurtful displays. The goal is to impose a uniform ideological perspective on dissenters.”

When this agenda is stoked and accepted, monuments will increasingly face a permanent and revolving ideological test, subjected to destruction after sudden shifts in power and minor changes in the cultural milieu.

New Orleans suffers with rapidly climbing murder and crime rates, some of the worst roads for a major city in the United States, unsafe drinking water, and sky-high levels of debt. It is only now starting to build an effective system of education based around school choice, after scoring among the worst in the country for generations. Is the crusade to remove the monuments going to change any of this or fix racial tensions? No. And it will come at a great additional cost.

A city that struggles to fill potholes should perhaps be focused more on the immediate problems at hand than demolishing century old statues. As Ellen Carmichael noted inNational Review, “One New Orleanian said he spoke with a contractor who said that the cost to remove just the statue — without its foundation — and store it for a single month would top $1 million. This could instead be used to pay for the salaries for 228 new police officers during that same period.”

If Americans continue to back down to the relentless attempts to erase our history—essentially everything that falls outside of the constantly shifting and increasingly narrow band of ideas acceptable to the modern intellectual left—there will not be merely fewer statues of Robert E. Lee and old Confederates. There will be little of this country’s history and ideas left to protect, reflect on, and uphold. We will live in an intellectual and moral wasteland in which the only views deemed acceptable to express or examine come from the loudest and most indignant purveyors of social justice haunting college campuses.

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God is the Foundation of Thanksgiving and why we give thanks.

George Washington's First Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to


"recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"


Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

  And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.


Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A.D. 1789.

Given under my hand at the City of New York
The third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
George Washington