Glenn Beck’s insane ideology

Tim W. writes:

Your reader JC from Houston was spot on about Glenn Beck. I’ve watched Beck’s show many times and it’s disconcerting. He’ll call America the greatest nation ever and then immediately launch into a list of atrocities committed by our country. He explains this by saying that “progressives” were responsible for all these atrocities. He’s developed a convoluted history in which the present leftist Democratic Party of Obama & Pelosi is the direct descendant of the white supremacists of the Old South and the eugenicists of the early twentieth century. He has a difficult time trying to explain how Pitchfork Ben Tillman supporting Jim Crow in 1890 South Carolina was the seed that grew into the radical left that arose in the 1960s, but he gives it his all.

With blacks committing thousands of violent crimes annually against whites, we’re supposed to see the “big picture” and dwell on KKK lynchings, Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policies, and FDR’s internment of the Japanese in WWII. They’re all part of the same “progressive Democrat” ideology represented today by Al Sharpton playing the race card. The New Black Panthers screaming for the elimination of white folks is part of the same “progressive Democrat” agenda that once led to calls for using birth control to keep down the black birth rate (Margaret Sanger circa 1930).

Last night Beck even encouraged people to go to the library and do some research because our school textbooks cover up our white racist past and we have no idea how horrible our nation has been. Don’t ask me what planet he’s living on. He said we had been the greatest nation on earth while also being a “horror show.” He said it’s up to us whether we strive to be a greater nation or descend further into horror. And the only way to avoid the horror is for all the races to come together and reject “progressivism.”

This idea, loony as it is, isn’t unique to Beck. It’s very prominent at Free Republic, for example, where there are daily posts about the racist horrors of pre-1964 America, followed by a triumphant revelation that the atrocities were sanctioned by “Democrats.” We’re then told that Pelosi, Obama, and Reid are just like those Manifest Destiny people who stole America from the Indians, or like John C. Calhoun and Robert E. Lee, or like the great Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, a devoted conservative and defender of our national security (he was a segregationist, you see, so he was a bad guy, and since he was a “Democrat” then Pelosi is just like him).

Incidentally, Beck says Manifest Destiny was evil. I guess we should have been satisfied with Jamestown.

August 22

Tim W. writes:

Here’s an example of what Beck’s show has become. Read it and tell me if you think he’s sane! :-)

Beck has undergone a transformation. When he was the token conservative on CNN, his show was pretty mundane. A lot of complaining about high taxes and big government. Complaints about the Democrats being anti-military. Pretty much standard “mainstream conservative” talking points. Not bad, but nothing you couldn’t hear daily by listening to Rush or Levin or Hannity.

Then he moved to Fox and i guess he felt he needed to spice up his presentation since he had in-house competition there from O’Reilly, Hannity, etc. So he started behaving in a silly manner, daring the Obama White House to call him and prove him wrong on a special red phone he had installed. He sometimes talked to a hand-held puppet. But amidst the silliness he presented some worthwhile information about the radical connections of many of Obama’s cronies like Bill Ayers and Vann Jones.

At some point, Beck admitted he hadn’t read as much American history as he should have, and reported that he was spending hours daily reading up on our past. He was very impressed with the Founding Fathers and with Lincoln. But he expressed horror at some of the other things he learned. He ripped FDR for interning the Japanese and for tolerating white supremacist southerners as part of his coalition. Then he discovered that Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were “progressives.” He denounced them and began trying to link today’s “progressives” to them. He expanded this to include every “bad guy” he could think of. Slave owners, Jim Crow supporters, eugenicists, prohibitionists…. all are said to be the creators of today’s Obama-Pelosi Democratic Party. Eventually, he declared Andrew Jackson to be the racist personification of evil who started all this “progressive” stuff. We just need to see the “big picture” about how the removal of the Cherokee and today’s race-card playing demagogues such as Sharpton are manifestations of the same “progressive” evil.

LA replies:

I had to force myself to read this and ended up skimming it, because of the constant stops and starts and asides. I certainly couldn’t stand to watch him on video.

As for substance, at first glance it’s a cute idea, Divine Providence good, Manifest Destiny bad. However, if he’s going to attack Manifest Destiny, then he’s attacking the existence of the United States, since MD simply said that it is America’s destiny to occupy this continent as one nation from sea to sea. Without MD, the entire Southwest would still be part of Mexico.

However, one could argue that by taking the SW, we set ourselves up for losing it, which is what is happening now through Mexican invasion. But anyone who agrees with Beck is almost inevitably going to end up siding with the Mexican invasion and saying that there’s nothing we can to do stop it.

Worse is his statement that we did “unbelievably horrible” things to the American Indians. If that’s his position, what is he saying should have been done? Leave the entire continent as a giant game preserve? That’s what Theodore Roosevelt said would have been the alternative, and he was right. But maybe TR is on his villain’s list, along with Andrew Jackson.

Again, I don’t know how anyone could bear watching him. He takes forever to make a point, endlessly repeats his introductory points before he gets to the point itself. That’s one reason I don’t listen to talk radio. And that’s not even mentioning his goofiness, which I do not find charming.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 21, 2010 12:13 PM | Send
    

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