Beck 2010: The country will be washed with blood

As Beck gets into the news more, I cannot help but remember the following quote that he said back in 2010.  

As I stood at the Lincoln Memorial today, and I … I read the words. Could you get a second inaugural address for me? Stu, Lincoln’s second inaugural address. We’re going to take a break and I am going to read what I saw on the wall. I will read his exact words, but in a nut shell, God will wash this nation with blood if he has to, but he doesn't have to. He doesn’t have to. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are forces…we are not fighting against Barack Obama, we’re not fighting against the democratic party. We are not fighting something that simple, oh how I wish we were. We’re not. I told you after September 11th there is a perfect storm formulating and it is here and I have begged…if you’d, if you’ll listen to me as the market started to melt down…I told you, I begged you then. Please, please get off of this party thing. Please and let’s have real conversations, for the love of Pete let’s please come together. Why? Because I said at the time we are passing all of the exits. Gang, there is one exit left. There is one exit left and it is God. Everything that is coming our way is too big to handle on our own. If we do not put God at the center of our own personal lives and the center of our country, we will not survive. The country will be washed with blood and someone will have to start over and God only knows how long that takes.

Now in fairness to Beck, Lincoln does use the word "blood" once in his second inaugural address.  In the middle of this short address, Lincoln turns the subject to theodicy, pondering why God has permitted this horrible war among two groups of his worshipers.  Near the end, he wonders if the South has a debt to pay the Almighty for slavery.

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."3 Then Lincoln ends with the unforgettable conclusion.  With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Lincoln does suggest that God might have a blood quota that needed to be satisfied, but nowhere does Lincoln talk about washing the nation in blood.  There is a difference.  The one is blood for blood, instead of bloody annihilation. Elsewhere Beck has had bloody dialogue with American History.  Earlier that year in May of 2010, he said the following:

I just the other day read a letter between Thomas Jefferson and James — or John Adams. It was 1920 — 1823, 1824. And they were going back and forth and they were talking about, wow, this is going to fall apart at some point. And Thomas Jefferson said, yes, yes. But if they lose freedom — he's speaking of us — future generations, if they lose freedom, there will be rivers of blood.

I mean, he talks about rivers of blood three or four times before we finally gain freedom back. Boy, I hope that's not true. But I can tell you there will be rivers of blood if we don't have values and principles. Second attempt, third attempt, fourth attempt — it's going to take a while to turn it back around.

You must see yourself as guardian, somebody who will preserve what is true and pass it on. Be a guardian. We don't need militants or revolutionaries. We need guardians. We need leaders.

This is how the Library of Congress describes the letter.

"Rivers of blood must yet flow"

In a letter to Adams, Jefferson asserted that self-government in Europe and Spanish America would require a long and bloody revolution: "all will attain representative government, more or less perfect. This is now well understood to be a necessary check on kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to exterminate. to attain all this however rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over."

Here is a link to the full letter, read it for yourself.   Beck took a letter arguing that a bloody revolution was needed to establish European liberty and said it meant that there would be rivers of American blood if we "lose freedom".  Beck put his own words in Lincoln and Jefferson's mouths. Whose blood was Beck thinking about?  Who was Beck's God going to slay?

Recently Beck apologized for being divisive.  It is about time that he came to that conclusion, years after he argued God was going to wash the nation in blood.  Also, he has reported that the feud between Hannity, Levin, and him has ended.  According to Beck, a mutual acquaintance was trying to divide the Tea Party by spreading discord among them.  Good for him, but it might be a while before these quotes are not the first things that come to mind.