Glenn Beck Starts 2013 With a Question: 'Why?' -- Find Out the Answer

(TheBlazeTV)

Glenn Beck marked his first broadcast of 2013 with two important issues that are sure to impact American life in the year ahead: the fiscal cliff, and gun control. While the two topics may seem totally unrelated, Beck explained why they have more in common than you think. In fact, essentially all issues or causes can always be extrapolated down to their most rudimentary and, most important component: "the why."

In both cases, according to Beck, the reason why "is being sidestepped." It doesn't matter the topic, the most "crucial component of life," according to Beck, is "the why."

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For example, while people are politicizing the horrific Newtown school shooting that left 28 dead as a means to call for tighter gun control, no one is getting to the root of the matter. For Beck, Adam Lanza was not a victim of broken gun laws or an overzealous Second Amendment. For Beck he wasn't even the victim of a "prepper-nut" gun-toting mother. Lanza, like too many in today's generation who engage in mass-shootings are a product of "broken families, a break-down of values, desensitization of our children through media, Hollywood, and video games."

YouTube brawls and flashmobs, children confused by violent video games all indicate that children have grown up to be "dead inside," according to Beck. And it very well may be true. When one delves into the heart of the matter and examines the situation honestly, would a weapons-bans change our culture’s morbid obsession with death and violence?

On a regular basis, impressionable children, at their most malleable and vulnerable stage of development, are given unfettered access to music, movies, television programs and video-games that glorify bloodshed. How can this not have a detrimental effect on one's psyche?

At the end of 2012 Blaze, I wrote in a Blaze opinion column that our First Amendment rights give artists, filmmakers, writers, music-makers and video game creators the freedom to produce works promoting violence, just as we, the consumer, hold the power to support such material through our consumption. Still, when the bar of stimulus been set to such a high, and indeed depraved level, what can be expected? Will desensitization of both ourselves and our children not ensue?

Indeed, people of good will and sanity are not likely to commit unspeakable acts of violence simply for having listened to rap music or for having watched a movie displaying grotesque images of murder and mayhem, but long-term societal impact is brought to bear by what we, ourselves, condone (sometimes unwittingly) each and every day.

"I thought we were behind the eight-ball on the culture war," Beck noted before stating that he never realized we were much worse off than even he had imagined. With a view toward better understanding the motivation behind the Newtown shooting, TheBlaze will unveil a special edition of The Glenn Beck Program Thursday, January 3.