I've been inspired by Beck all year, as readers might have noticed. I don't, however, consider Beck a "conservative." He's libertarian, and while I've yet to hear Beck speak much on foreign policy this year, I'd be quick to disagree with him if he started to sound like Ron Paul or the idiot "paleocons."
I mention this especially with reference to Peter Wehner's essay, "Glenn Beck: Harmful to the Conservative Movement":
I don’t pretend to be an expert on Beck. In the past I assumed he was a typical figure in the pundit and cable-media world. Only recently have I watched portions of his television program, as well as interviews with him, and heard parts of his radio program. And what I’ve seen should worry the conservative movement ....I omitted some of the passages at the center of Wehner's post, so check that for more substance.
I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn’t the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on.
Outside of the hot neocons (VDH, the Kagans, Charles Krauthammer), Peter Wehner's probably my favorite online commentator. This particular essay is bothersome, however. He's coming off like David Frum here, and that's about as bad a put-down one can get these days. Folks need to talk Glenn Beck for what he is: an entertainer and a lightning rod for popular discontent, and he's not hurting conservative by mobilizing the small-government lumpen-electorate (they'll turn out for the GOP). Not only that, right now it's all about the tea parties, the town halls, and resisting the socialist abomination that is the Barack Obama White House. Who's been doing a more thorough job in taking on the ACORN-Democratic-Obama complex? I mean, c'mon give it up for Fox News, where Beck is at the forefront of the conservative/libertarian resistance. Yeah, he's a little far-fetched sometimes, but hardly as bad as the Van Jones-ACORN-NEA edifice that's just now tumbling under its own contradictions. Karl Marx, six-feet under at Highgate, has to be rolling over at that one.
(P.S.: As bad as John McCain was for many conservatives during the campaign, I can guarantee you he wouldn't have been near as bad as Obama - and remember, we'd have Sarah Palin in the vice-president's mansion right now!)
(P.S.S.: Edited.)
12 comments:
I think Glenn Beck, and I have said it here many times, is a full of himself. He is hell bent on self-aggrandizement. He is a lose cannon. We do not need self-absorbed attention grabbers, we need intelligent solutions. Glenn Beck is simply a O'Reilly-wanta-be headline grabber. Hasn't anyone noticed when he has reasonable guests on with a point, his flat, immaturity? The intelligent left will use himj against us.
Glenn Beck is doing the investigative work the LSM should be doing. He digs and digs and comes up with things that no one saw coming. Is he a journalist? Nah. Is he a guy with a big mouth and a huge audience? Sure, okay. But he only shows folks what he finds and then tells us to do the research ourselves. This is why Beck is popular and this is why the leftists despise him so. He's not going away any time soon...
Donald,
I just went to the second link. This was a recent show (Beck mentioned John Stossel coming to work at Fox). Beck said "pull the troops out of Korea, Afghanistan, Germany, I don't know if I want them anywhere outside of Texas!" He also mentioned "U.S. imperialism under both Democrats and Republicans." He bashes Teddy Roosevelt and calls him "everyone's love in the Republican Party." And mocks them for wanting to "spread sunshine, lollipops, happiness and democracy around the world." He says "we can't afford to" spread democracy, like any number of small-minded libertarians. He evenutally becomes completely incorherent at the end, and contradicts himself, but keeps up with the "come home, America" talk.
The really odd part is that the link came from Infowars, the crazy truther cite, which was saying Beck's a Johnny-come-lately to the cause, and possibly a "PsyOps plant" to try and trick the truthers and anti-war crazies on the right. Regular infowars-type nuttiness.
After listening to the clip, I think Wehner, if anything, downplayed the "American imperialism" Beck displays. It's a shame, but Beck seems to be going to a very dark place.
I posted this at HA earlier an a related thread, but it works here just as well:
Beck is right. The idiot McCain would have been a disaster for both conservatism and America.
Obama’s election may have given us the last opportunity we will have to save both.
BTW - I don’t want to see any straw-poll BS about Huckabee leading anything. All he has going for him is his support of the FairTax.
If the idiot republicans allow the left and the RINOs to select their candidate in 2012 as they did in 2008, you can kiss America good-bye.
-Dave
And one more thing about McCain:
The next time he decides to "cross the aisle," I hope he plans on staying there.
-Dave
A lot of people are pissed off about Glenn Beck and the only thing I can say is GET OVER IT! He's a Libertarian but he has the Leftinistra PISSED off and that's OK by me.
So what if he thinks McCain would be worse. McCain ain't in the pocket so...SO WHAT?
Get over McCain. Let's get PALIN involved and in the show!
Mark has it right, Beck is a Libertarian, not a Conservative, and speaks his own mind and ideas. I would disagree with him that McCain would have be worst, but civil people can do that.
I voted for McCain precisely because anyone who paid real attention to Obama knew he was going to be a disaster that he is turning into. My vote for McCain was surely not because I liked him. It was a vote against all of this growth of government to the detriment of the country and its people.
Beck also followed his statement about Afghanistan with either give the military the manpower, material, et al to win the war or bring them home, which I agree.
Rusty,
Here is where I disagree with you, Beck is being Beck and I am fine with that. I would be fine with Obama being Obama because he would not have been elected President had this nation really knew who is was and is.
You can thank Beck, and others like Brietbart, for seeing the AP today actually intimating that Obama is lying. We are beginning to hear and read about more information on the pure corruption that is team Obama and those people who claim to be Democrats. The landslide is just starting to gain momentum because even those slackers and sycophants in the media cannot hold it back anymore. Beck is part of that happening.
As much as O'Reilly bothers me sometimes he has been a real net positive in getting the news out there.
Good post. Wehner may have been strong on Iraq, but on Palin and others, he's just another Latimer or that other GWB WH twit spokesboy, the stupid one before Tony, who came out with a tell-all book.
Glenn draws almost as many eyeballs as ALL FOUR segments of KO/Maddow from 8-12 & he's sequestered at 5PM in a previous dead zone. BOR is wearing out the welcome mat with his half-baked twitches leftward and maybe Fox should put Glenn in the 9PM slot & move Hannity to 8. BOR will be snapped up by CNN which he will gratify with suitably Callawayesque Irish tirades.
I voted for McCain and I really don't like McCain at ALL. I don't think that he would have been worse than BHO, unless - unless - UNLESS - the slide toward the left would have just been a little bit slower and more subtle - not as noticeable. We're in a situation NOW where the lefties are pushing just a little to hard and a little too fast. People notice. They get pissed. Pretty soon they are adamant about rallying behind a truly conservative candidate and won't take no for an answer. They wake up. They get up off their asses.
So - in that sense - BHO may be better for the country in the long run, because anything less and the silent majority would have continued in its slumber.
We may be too late now - all may still be lost depending on which way this thing goes over the next couple of years.
McCain was the worst candidate for the conservatives. Could the party have picked anyone more unsuitable? By the time the primaries came to PA there wasn't even a choice left for us. I voted with a write in - that wasn't even counted - so I was completely disenfranchised anyway.. Oh. My blood boils.
Ronald Reagan:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29318.html
"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals – if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."
Wehner's hero George Bush seems to have thought McCain was incompetent and would have been a disaster, as quoted by one of Bush's speech writers ...
If the idiot republicans allow the left and the RINOs to select their candidate in 2012 as they did in 2008, you can kiss America good-bye.
Bravo!
I voted for McCain because of obama. It was the first vote for a person running as Republican for president I have cast since Ronnie in 1984. I should have stuck with voting libertarian. At least I would have not wasted my vote.
For Glenn Beck, at least he is willing to talk about the things no one else will.
The Republicans deserve the ridicule. They are to blame just as much as the demo-rats for the tack this country has taken. Worse though, the repubs know better, so that makes their transgressions even worse...
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