Radio talk show host Glenn Beck and CNN host Don Lemon continued their own conversation trying to find common ground Wednesday while urging America as a whole to do the same.
Beck appeared on Lemon's
"CNN Tonight," and urged people in a divided America to purposely seek out people they disagree with to talk about important issues.
Beck and Lemon have bonded over the issue of political correctness, with Beck praising Lemon for speaking out against liberals trying to enforce it. Lemon appeared on Beck's radio show on Monday and invited Beck to appear on his CNN program.
"I think we have to continue having conversations like we're having," Beck told Lemon.
"If you're not uncomfortable in at least one conversation a week, intentionally uncomfortable, maybe you aren't pushing hard enough. You should reach out to somebody that makes you a little uncomfortable and see if you can find some sort of common ground."
Lemon asked Beck about his stance on flying the Confederate flag on public property. Beck said he is against it, and said he doesn't buy the "state's rights" arguments many defenders of the flag make.
Beck isn't from the South and said he first heard the argument when he worked in Tampa, Florida. So he read the Confederate Constitution and saw that it required states who joined to support slavery.
On the issue of the N-word, which Lemon has gotten into hot water for saying, Beck said he thinks no one should say it, including Lemon, even though Lemon said he was using it as a journalist.
"If I used it, I can guarantee you that tomorrow or tonight would be the last time I would be seen on broadcast television," Beck said.
Beck said that, as a libertarian, he believes gay marriage should be allowed, but that people also should not be required to break their religious convictions and forced to participate in weddings.
He said he has gay employees and once threatened to cancel a show over a stage manager who berated them.
Lemon said he is conservative on fiscal issues but liberal on social issues as a gay black man, and Beck told him he respects him for that because, like himself, people can't predict what they they think.
"The thing that I find refreshing about you is that there are times that you surprise me, which says to me that you're not just an ideologue," Beck said. "People trap us in these boxes now to where everybody just thinks I'm for these certain things because that's just who they are. No. I'm my own man and you're your own man and I appreciate that."
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