Parting Company with Glenn Beck

Dec 13, 2011 by

Parting Company with Glenn Beck

I think Glenn Beck has already done a tremendous service for our country.  He is unquestionably courageous, and a clearly gracious man of conviction and character.  He’s consistent, and thoughtful.  I think he’s the sort of guy any of us would feel unbelievably fortunate to have as a best friend, because he’s steady and trustworthy.  Yet there has always been something about him that has kept me from being one of his adherents.

Ok, I’ve telegraphed the “but..” haven’t I?  Yes, I’m afraid Glenn Beck went and said something yesterday I just cannot find a way to excuse:  He would consider voting for Ron Paul on a third-party ticket if the Newt Gingrich is the nominee.

 I have three, gigantic issues with this excerpt from Glenn’s show.  First, I find it really ironic that immediately after telling the caller that they can’t have a discussion unless he (the caller) understands his (Glenn’s) side, and can “get that right,” Glenn goes on to prove that he doesn’t understand or “get right” anything Gingrich has said.  Second, Glenn inexplicably is now advocating a third-party run if the Republican nominee doesn’t measure up to his standards, a move which will award Obama, whom Glenn has been warning us about for the past three years, a second-term.  And finally, that person he’s enraptured enough with in order to undermine the Republican nominee is none other than Ron Paul.

So suddenly Newt Gingrich is a progressive?  When did this happen?  Apparently, it happened after Glenn decided he had a monopoly on the meaning of the word “progressive” and began warning the rest of America who they were.  To be perfectly fair, he gets it right most of the time.  The term progressive is not necessarily an easy one to nail-down.  It’s a distinctly American political persuasion, and unquestionably a part of the unpleasant stew of totalitarian and statist ideologies that includes socialism, Marxism, communism and fascism.  It’s hard to define exactly where the lines of demarcation are, but all these ideologies share a virulent hostility toward individual liberty and free-market entrepreneurship.    All believe unreservedly in using the power and authority of the state to cure all manner of social ills, both real and imagined.  Come to think of it, they view liberty and capitalism as social ills!  To accuse Newt Gingrich of being a progressive is simply absurd, by any rational or objective measure.  Romney, you might be able to make a case for, depending on whether you believe he understands the distinction between the state and federal levels of government, but Gingrich?  Totally absurd.

I would be willing to wager that the words “Newt Gingrich” and “progressive” were not positively associated with each other until Glenn Beck began talking about progressivism these past two and a half or three years.  When Newt was first elected to congress in 1979, nobody was calling him a “progressive.”  He was recognized quite clearly as a conservative.  In 1983, while a member of the House, he founded the Conservative Opportunity Society, which was a group of young conservative House Republicans, who met weekly to exchange and discuss ideas.  Ronald Reagan used the ideas of the Opportunity Society for his re-election campaign in 1984, and referenced them in his first State of the Union address after his re-election.  The Society’s goals for economic growth, education, crime, space exploration, and social issues all became things Reagan received much credit for among the conservative movement.  Gingrich is also credited with Reagan’s “are you better-off now than you were four years ago” campaign slogan.

After tirelessly assailing a Democrat House majority who had held power for more than 40 years, Gingrich was a key player in engineering the 1994 election campaign, featuring the Contract with America, in which the Republicans won 54 seats, and took the majority for the first time since 1954.  The Contract included, among other things, welfare reform, term limits, and a balanced budget amendment, hardly a slate of “progressive” ideas.

In 1998, Gingrich published Lessons learned the Hard Way, in which he advocated spiritual renewal and volunteerism, the importance of families, and reducing business regulation.  Again, perhaps this page fell-out of my stolen copy of the Progressive Politics Play Book, but these don’t sound like anything I’ve heard from that side of the aisle.  I could go on, but hopefully you get the gist.  Gingrich’s history is replete with conservative views, activism and policies on fiscal and social fronts, and in contrast with many other politicians, he has actually accomplished many of them.

Now let me just say for the record, I’m not a Gingrich-guy.  He was nowhere on my list of presidential hopefuls at the start of the year.  When he announced his campaign, I laughed.  I figured anyone who needed two campaign jets, one for him and his staff, and the other for his baggage, had no prayer.  I can honestly say that I have never been a particular fan of Gingrich, but having now done a considerable amount of research on him, the idea that he’s a progressive in any sense is utterly absurd.  Why is Glenn calling him a progressive?  I don’t know, he didn’t really make that clear.  I think to a certain extent, Glenn has become a bit carried-away with his recently discovered fascination with progressives.  Certainly many of them are real, even self-admitted (see: Hillary Clinton) but lately I have observed a tendency on the part of Mr. Beck, whenever he sees or hears someone say something outside his narrow view of political wholesomeness, to crook a finger at them and scream “WITCH! WITCH!” as he rallies the villagers against the perceived threat.  Clearly, Glenn does not understand or “get right” what Gingrich is saying, or what he stands for.  After interviewing Newt on his show, Glen went on Andrew Napolitano’s show on Fox and implored the Tea Party to “Do your research on Newt.”  Well Glenn, I have done my research, and to me it looks like you’re the one who needs to do a little reading.

My second big problem with Glenn’s remarks yesterday morning is much more difficult for me to understand.  As the caller recounts, for the past three years, Glenn himself has been warning of the dire consequences of an Obama administration.  Let me state here for the record, Glenn has been right.  I think he oversells some aspects of things, like Agenda 21 and Cloward-Piven, but there is no arguing that Obama is an unqualified socialist, and seeks to literally re-define America.

Barack Obama is the least-known, most under-vetted president in the history of our country.  To this day, he has not released his college transcripts.  Think about that one singular fact for a moment.  All you self-identifying liberals out there, if there was a top-tier Republican presidential candidate who refused to release his college transcripts, what would you be saying about it?  No big deal?  That’s hogwash and you know it!  You’d be screaming bloody-murder, that’s what you’d be doing, and the major media organs would be reverberating the echoes of your screaming until said candidate released said transcripts, or had dropped-out of the race, whichever came first.  But not Obama, mmm-mmm-mmm.  The reason this, and many other facts about Obama never make it to the front page of the New York Times or the lead story of the CBS Evening News is because they are either completely incurious about him, or not interested in covering things they know those of us in “fly-over country” might find objectionable.  Like the fact that both his parents were communists.  Or that the man Obama identifies in his own memoir (one of two(!) memoirs the guy has written.  Who the hell writes TWO memoirs?) as his mentor as a young boy, Frank Marshall Davis, was a ranking member of the CPUSA.  And the fact that by his own words, he was careful to associate only with radical leftist professors and students while in college.  Or his admiration for communist Saul Alinsky.  Did I mention self-described communist and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, in whose home Obama had his political “coming-out” party?  Or how about the fact that he appointed two (that we know of) communists to his staff, Anita Dunn and Van Jones?  Glenn nailed all of this, and more.  Few people have been more on-point in talking about how Obama wants to remake America in his own radical leftist image.  Few people are more aware than Glenn of the consequences of a second-term for Obama.  This is why his remark about voting third-party is so exasperating.

Many of you on the political right still do a slow-boil when the name Bill Clinton is mentioned.  This is completely understandable.  Clinton didn’t even approach the damage in eight years Obama has managed in less than four, but he still makes Republicans and conservatives grind their teeth.  Well I have a news-flash for all you tooth-grinders: You have no one but yourselves to blame for Bill Clinton ever being more than an obscure Arkansas politician.  Two words: Ross Perot.  In 1992, Ross Perot took 18.9% of the vote, the vast, overwhelming majority of which would otherwise have gone to George Bush, and would have given him the win over Clinton.  And now Glenn is talking about doing it again, only this time, we have a guy who by Glenn’s own estimation may do generation’s worth of damage, perhaps permanent damage, to the principles this country was founded upon.

I can only think of one response:

 

 

Lastly, and only a little less breath-taking than the prospect of a third-party run handing the White House back to Obama, is the hypothetical recipient of Glenn’s support: Ron Paul!  Seriously.

Mr. Paul has been enjoying the benefit of being a second or third tier candidate thus far in the race, that being a lack of the sort of attention and scrutiny that comes with being a front-runner.  I’m sure Herman Cain could have a little talk with him about what that’s like.  Glenn has done yeoman’s work in digging into the backgrounds and histories of a number of prominent and not-so-prominent individuals, including George Soros, Van Jones, and our aforementioned president.  I only wish he had done the same with Ron Paul.  If he had, he may never have made his ill-advised remark.

First and foremost, Paul is not a Republican.  He may have an “R” next to his name on the ballot, but I would submit it is no more meaningful than the “R” next to Michael Bloomberg’s name in New York.  If Bloomberg wanted to run for national office, Republicans everywhere would instantly tag him with the “RINO” label, and recognize him as not really one of their own.  In a rational world, the same would be true of Paul.  Paul is actually a libertarian, and is actually too fringy for many in that famously fringy group to stomach.  Paul is frequently at odds with Republicans.  In 2008, he endorsed Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader over john McCain, a member of his own party.  Think about that for a moment.  Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader, two people even more radical than Obama.  McKinney in particular is a raving nut and a well-known anti-Semite.

Speaking of which, anti-Semitism accusations have swirled around Paul for years.  A senior advisor of Paul’s, Philip Giraldi, has a well-traveled reputation for anti-Semitism.  And Paul has unapologetically accepted money from Stormfront founder and KKK Grand Wizard Don Black.  He has reportedly theorized that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was carried out by the Israeli Mossad, and one of his newsletters praised ex-clan leader David Duke in 1991.

Paul is responsible for publishing several newsletters throughout the 1980s and ‘90s which would be a treasure trove of opposition research were anyone to dig into them.  Reportedly they never featured a by-line, and Paul denies having written much of the material, but a common theme seems to have been a less than complimentary view of Blacks, who were described as lazy, entitled, and prone to violence.  A fair question is, if he so strenuously disagrees with such views, why would he allow them to be published in his newsletters?

Paul is not exactly the picture of honesty and consistency when it comes to his famous views on budget and finance, either.  He rails against the practice of earmarks, yet is notorious for adding his own to bills expected to pass, so that he can later vote against those very bills and claim purity.  He champions free trade, but votes against every free trade bill that comes along.  He claims to be Pro-life, but has supported abortion at the state-level, including public funding thereof, and has several times garnered a respectable rating from the radical pro-abortion organization NARAL.  He wants to cut-off all foreign aid, including humanitarian.  He wants to cut the military budget by one trillion (with a “T”) dollars, effectively ending all development and procurement.  He wants to close all overseas bases, and bring-home all troops, though it’s unclear where those troops will go or what they’ll be doing once they’re home.  He wants to close the CIA, which will not just cripple, but completely destroy our intelligence gathering capability.  I could go on, but the point clearly is that Paul is so far outside the mainstream, and advocates so many drastic, draconian changes without any thought to their practical effects or consequences, it’s difficult to imagine how he would be an improvement over Obama.

Glenn says he hates Paul’s policies toward the Middle-East, but what’s astounding is that knowing what those policies are, knowing that Paul would completely abandon Israel, that he is perfectly fine with Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, that he could ever conscience supporting him.

As I have said elsewhere, I will support whoever the Republican nominee is, even if it’s Ron Paul, but I would be in mortal fear for what would become of my country if we are ever faced with that choice.  What I find utterly mind-boggling is that Glenn Beck would make a statement to the effect that he would consider voting for Ron Paul as a third-party choice over Gingrich, which essentially means Glenn would rather give us another four years of Obama.  This flies in the face of what Glenn himself has been warning us about Obama for the past three years.  Seriously Glenn, do some homework of your own.

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