On the contrary... I personally think he’s the most important public voice in America at the moment. He keeps a live phone on his stage so the Whitehouse can call and correct the facts he raises (they never do). He fills his in studio audience with groups that we’re told don’t actually exist: Spanish speaking immigrants who want the border closed; women against abortion; black conservatives. According to the liberal media, his home audience is supposedly made up of nothing but a few illiterate rednecks and paranoiacs. But his ratings are in the stratosphere in his time zone and when he did a program on the “The Road To Serfdom”, it became the most purchased book on amazon.com.
He’ll tell you himself that he is possessed of an unremarkable intelligence, yet I see him consistently managing to get most big questions absolutely right. And I confess that I’ve been completely fascinated by this phenomenon. I’ve never understood how someone can get things so right and not do it more or less the way that I have. Start with the basics: supply and demand – all men created equal – shall not be infringed etc- and work up from there. But he doesn’t do that. He venerates the constitution of course, and he respects and fully embraces free markets, but he goes from logical step #1 to logical step #30 and that leaves some gaps in his thinking.
The funny part is, when he goes back to fill in those gaps he almost always gets those right too. It’s a rare thing when he’s completely off the mark. The one area where I think my view and his diverge is that he believes what we’re seeing now is the result of careful planning and orchestrated behavior by liberals where I simply don’t. He thinks liberals are acting according to a plan, while I don’t give them that much credit. I think they’ve all made a single philosophical mistake that's driving all of them off the same cliff.
Really I think my difference with Glenn Beck's worldview is one of projection (which both he and I and everyone else is almost always guilty of) and experience. Beck is a bright guy but no outlier. He looks at guys like David Axelrod and Barak Obama and decides that they’re terribly bright guys; while to me they looks like just another pair of dim academics hobbled by their childish philosophy. We agree that their policies will do harm to America, but we differ on how that’s come to be.
I think the damage they do will be mostly well intentioned and accidental, while Beck sees what they’re doing and says “they can’t possibly be so stupid as to be doing this by accident!” My only response to this is… “Yes, they most certainly can”. Our universities are filled with liberals who are utterly convinced that they are right even thought their ideas have failed completely, every single time they’ve been tried. There are still devoted Marxists stuffing the halls of power among the education and media elite, even though Marxism has already been shown to fail completely and utterly.
But the core of their error is that they despise any political system that doesn’t put someone like them at the top. And they believe it should be that way in spite of their lack of actual achievement. To them capitalism can’t be fair because any “fair” system would be one that placed them in charge. Their world view is just a child’s fantasy about growing up to be king, only they’ve taken it to the next step and now they're all trying to reshape the actual world to match that tragically flawed theory. I think desperation for success without achievement is more than enough to lead them all to come to the same incorrect conclusions about the world even without a conspiracy.
Beck on the other hand doesn’t see them as stupid and infantile like I do. He still sees that same failure of logic and how it leads them to agree not only on a goal but also on a process. And since that process will involve eliminating the freedom of a great many people, he imagines, quite rightly, that a conspiracy would achieve the same effect. To be honest, I’m not sure he isn’t correct at some level. I’m sure there are agreements in place to carefully spin the news, minimize the influence, manage the perception, and to generally talk down the dark side of things. But I don’t think it meets the threshold of actually being a conspiracy. With so many people out there who are wrong in exactly the same way, I don’t’ think it needs to.
He sees evil geniuses, while I think the best and most useful among them are still just useful idiots. He’s sees intention, while I see only misguided error. Well, not only. There are people at the top who I think are interested in power and simply don’t care what damage they do. They’re leading mobs of people who are detached from reality and have no idea that the policies they’re advocating will hurt America, and in the end, themselves. But that describes 90% of the people in government from both parties if you ask me. So I’m less likely to point fingers and name names.
In fact, I think that’s what Beck mostly thinks too. The fact is, it’s just the media myth of Glenn Beck that is a raving lunatic. As is usually the case it’s the spoof that liberals have created out of fear of his rapidly increasing influence that has them so worked up. He’s not really crazy at all. He has gaps in his knowledge, but so does everyone. And if you believe the truth will out, then I’d be betting on Glenn Beck’s view of the world way before I bet on Barak Obama’s.
They say you only take flak when you’re over the target, and no one is taking flak like Glenn Beck. I’d say that tells you all you need to know about the man. He’s not crazy at all. He’s just making all the right enemies, and they want you to think of him that way. I think he’s far more right than wrong, but as he would probably tell you… better to listen to the man, and then make a decision for yourself.
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