How Well Do You Really Understand Civil Rights?
Here’s A Crash Course

Glenn Beck has begun to make the case that pushing back against big government is not a political issue, but a matter of civil rights.

When the IRS targets and intimidates Americans or when the NSA records every phone call you make, those are examples of civil rights being infringed, he says.

When many people think of civil rights, they think of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1960s. But speaking with David Barton, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Pastor Ken Hutcherson, Beck said the civil rights movement “started with Moses, and it never ended.”

Barton proceeded to explain civil rights from a constitutional and religious perspective, saying they “only work if you have absolute standards for what they are, and those absolute standards have always been – particularly for America, most of western civilization – the laws of nature and nature’s God.”

He gave an example: you have a right to life, and the government exists to protect your right to life. But today’s government appears to think equally that it protects your right to abortion, to take a life.

“That’s a violation of civil rights,” Barton said.

Watch his complete explanation, below:

But even if you see the matter as a civil rights issue, what does that mean? What can be done about it?

Pastor Hutcherson, a black man who grew up during the civil rights fight of the 1960s, said that if blacks were being targeted and intimidated by the IRS “There would be an uproar! We would already be marching!”

“What are you doing…allowing the government, allowing our president to allow others to take your rights away?” he asked.

The group agreed that religious leaders will be key in reasserting constitutional principles and rights.

“[We need to] help them find their courage again and if need be, we train the sheep to kick the shepherd down the path,” Hutcherson said.