GLENN BECK PROGRAM
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GLENN: From Radio City in Midtown Manhattan, hello, you sick twisted freak. Welcome to the program. So glad that you're here. My name is Glenn Beck. I had one of the rougher nights of my life last night. I have never spanked any of my children. I have -- I don't know. I grew up getting spankings as a kid. I'm not against spankings, but my kids, generally speaking, have not crossed -- there's just a line, and one of my kids crossed the line yesterday, last night, and I looked at my wife and I said, I mean -- and she said, spanking? And I said, I've never spanked any of the kids. And I had the hardest night. I had the hardest night. I just, I don't know. You know, I never really understood. I always mocked my father on, you know, this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you. I know it didn't hurt my dad that much but, boy, it hurt me. That just killed me last night looking at my son and explaining it to him and explaining that I was going to, you know, spank -- he didn't know what spanking was. Explain that to him, explain why. You know, that we have choices and that was a bad choice and there's consequences to your choices.

Last night I don't think I -- I didn't sleep very much. I kept seeing his eyes look at me. He looked at me differently beforehand. He knew how much trouble he was in, and his -- for the first time he looked at me -- I don't know how to explain it -- with fear. He had fear. I have never seen fear in my child's eyes and it killed me to introduce fear into his life. And I actually went into the other room and I said, come on with me; you're getting a spanking. I put him over my knee and I must have sat there for three, four minutes just praying. And he just, he didn't even move. And I brought him back in the other room and Tania was there and she said, did you spank him? And I said, no, I think Mom needs to be there. So we went in together and, ooh. You know, I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep last night. And, you know, I said to my wife. I said -- because she was the one, she was like, honey, spank him; not a bad thing. I said, I know that. I'm not against spanking. I just feel like his innocence went away yesterday. It's bound to happen, but to see fear in a child's eyes for the very first time, especially when I do this for a living, you know, looking at all of the stuff that, you know, fear and what -- I don't want my kid to live in fear. I don't want my kid -- you know. It's weird.

STU: Wait a minute. Hold on one second.

GLENN: What?

STU: First of all we can go over the, there needs to be consequences. The body has a mechanism for pain. So don't put your hand on a hot oven.

GLENN: Don't think I didn't think about that about 3:45. The Lord made pain for a reason. What is pain for? Yeah.

STU: It's to remember not to do the same thing over and over again.

GLENN: Right.

STU: I'm interested, though, to see because you have this webcam in the studio that you have -- it goes back to your house and you have conversations with your family in the morning and you watch each other during the day, you watch Rafe play all day on that thing. At one moment I think I noticed you have your first reunion with Rafe after this occurred. What, can you disclose what occurred?

GLENN: I said, good morning, Rafe. And he looked up and he said, morning, Daddy. I stayed in my bed all night. I said, I know you did.

STU: Bet he did.

GLENN: Good boy. And it wasn't about getting out of bed but that was the last thing I said to him: You move out of your bed, don't you even think about moving out of this bed. I mean, it was -- I mean, you know, and I don't want to get into everything. But Stu, I told you this morning.

STU: Lord God.

GLENN: I mean, is there any -- was there any -- are you a spanker? I mean, if you had kids, are you a spanker?

STU: Personally I would be an, in extreme cases. You couldn't want to do it.

GLENN: Would you agree this is an extreme?

STU: Holy God, yes.

GLENN: I never walked in -- with any of my kids, I've never walked in and went, spanking. I mean never.

STU: You single-handedly delayed my family by two years by telling me that story this morning.

DAN: We don't get to hear it? It was that bad?

GLENN: I've got Stephen Moore coming up in just a minute.

STU: Unless Stephen wants to talk spanking.

GLENN: I'll get into that -- it's not, it is bad. Don't get me wrong. It's horrific. It's horrific.

STU: Poor man.

GLENN: But yeah, you felt bad for me, didn't you?

STU: Bad for you and bad for me that that might be coming.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. I'll get into it tomorrow but I'm just, I'm so tender about it today. And I know I did the right thing. It's just --

STU: Yeah, the only question --

GLENN: Have you spanked yet, Dan?

DAN: No, I'm sitting here listening to this. In theory I'm for it but I don't know that I could do it.

GLENN: I think there's a time for spanking and that was clearly a time for spanking, but it's just --

DAN: It's coming for me, Glenn. My daughter's 2 and she's starting to test more and more and more and there's just less -- you can only say I'm counting to 3 so many times.

GLENN: And here's the thing on spanking. It's -- I feel, I think a lot smaller, a lot lower level but I feel like I would -- you know I'm for guns, you know I'm for defending myself. You know if somebody is killing, you know, the family or threatening the family or coming into the house and threatening the family, I will shoot you dead.

STU: Obviously.

GLENN: I will shoot you dead. But you know what? I'm not going to sleep well.

STU: No.

GLENN: You know what I mean? And that's the way I feel about spanking. I believe -- I mean, it's at the very end of the scale on the opposite direction of a gun, but is it --

STU: You care about the person more.

GLENN: Yeah. But it is, it is a consequence of action and it is a lot easier to just blow off that consequence because it hurts you. It really -- I mean, I understood my father more than I ever have before. "This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you." I remember getting spanked by my father. It hurt but it wasn't like that. Last night I cried my -- I really did. I cried myself to sleep last night. I woke up in the middle of the night. I started crying again. It tore me apart to spank my son, and I'm not going to tell him that. Last night I mastered that look, man. I mastered the look of, you don't even want to mess with me. I mastered that look last night.

STU: Yeah. You know, this is the part of parenting, when they learn that actions have consequence. That's, when they're going to be better people for it.

GLENN: Yeah. So we'll go into that a little more tomorrow, maybe.

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