A Word on Fascism, and What to do if Someone Calls You a Fascist

Whilst reading the book Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg, it really hit me how many times America’s ideological foundation has been threatened. The most recent and obvious example, of course, is the Islamic fundamentalists like Al Qaeda. Their ideas are largely unclear to me, to be honest, as they are to most everyone. Their cause is also the first cause rooted in traditional religion to attempt to overthrow American ideas, which makes it even stranger.

When I talk about American ideals, I mean the things that this nation has always held dear to its heart, though we’ve sometimes been guilty of hypocrisy on them. Here they are:

1. The ultimate equality of every man and woman.
2. The belief that the free market is generally (though not always) the answer to economic problems.
3. Our inherent belief that the individual is responsible for his own actions and he must be allowed to choose those actions and take responsibility for them in general.
4. That government must be representative of its people and must be restrained by a system of checks and balances.
5. That government should play a small role in the lives of Americans, whether it be in how they act or believe or in how they invest or spend their money.
6. That church and state ought to be separated and have different areas of power.

Those six ideas, as I understand it, sum up the foundation of this country as well as Classical Liberalism, which is what every one of the Founding Fathers believed in theory (though I must state that they did not agree, largely, with the implication of the first statement with regard to blacks).

These things are obvious enough to many Americans (though there have always been people who have strongly doubted, or outright disregarded, one or two of those principles). In fact, whether conservatives realize it or not, that is what we fight to conserve: Classic Liberalism (ironic, isn’t it?) 

The historical exterior challenges mounted to classic liberalism were most serious in the forms of Communism and Fascism. Now, for definition, Communists and Fascists aren’t all that different. They’re also two words that are thrown around far too much and not given enough context. So to help you understand what they mean, I can explain them both individually:

Communism is the ultimate “left-wing” form of government. Communism’s main tenet is that all property must belong to the community, the collective group. In communist nations there is no individual property, and the ultimate goal is for there to be no individual will but instead a collective one. It is essentially radical socialism, based on the anti-upper-class sentiments of Karl Marx. Communism has always felt that the workers of the world must unite against the oppressors. In this way, it is the most revolutionary of ideologies in that there is perpetual revolution. This is what makes it liberal (liberals, at their core, believe that new change is almost unequivocally good). Most liberals aren’t communists, but all communists are liberals. The quote from Karl Marx that best sums up Communism is this: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

Fascism, a more complex beast, has often been cast as the ultimate form of “right-wing” government. This is largely untrue. (The ultimate form of “right-wing” government, as the American conservative sees it today, truly is anarchy, meaning no government, but that’s another story for another day.) Fascism’s historical application has actually been quite bipartisan: Italian fascisms of the early 1900s through World War 2 promised a “third way” meaning no partisanship, just what works. Fascism spawned out of people who were intensely practical; namely, the Progressives of the late 1800s (whom modern liberals speak of with nostalgia). The Fascists despised the left-right gridlock of American, Italian, Spanish, German etc. politics; effectively despising legislatures in general. This led to the idea of fascism: a focus on effectively solving problems through a very strong, unified and non-representative government. (Fascists, like almost all extremists, are hopelessly idealistic. They claimed that they could make the kind of good government that would listen to its people without annoying Congressmen and voting.) Fascism was, much like Communism, very much focused on socialism as well and despised the upper-classes. Whereas Communists dream of the workers of the world uniting, Fascists dream of the workers of each country uniting behind the country. Mussolini’s quote that best sums up Fascism is this: “everything within the state, nothing outside the state.”

That leads me to another point about Fascism: it’s extremely nationalistic. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism (Hitler made a strong distinction of himself as a nationalist, not a patriot): nationalism focuses on words like “blood”, “people”, “destiny”, “race”, etc. while patriotism focuses on “ideals”, “country”, “freedom”, and “righteousness”. In other words, nationalists make an odd sort of reversion to tribal instincts and the blood of their people, whereas patriots focus much more on the modern nation and its values. I, a patriot, love America. Hitler, a nationalist, loved the German people. (Most liberals have trouble making the distinction, and so think that Hitler was a patriot like Conservatives are patriots. This is one link they draw between Bush and Hitler.)

Nazism fits into all of this by being an extension of Fascism. It was once said that Nazism is not a coherent ideology or belief, but a torrent of “hatred, passion, rage, prejudice, lust, and strength,” that is disguised as an ideology. Nazism takes racism to the next level, as well as the nationalistic tendencies I mentioned above. Hitler despised Germany as he saw it: he hated capitalism, the upper-classes, the Jews, the Communists, etc. whom he felt were ruining the greatest people (not nation, but people) on earth.

The argument that Hitler was a “conservative” is ludicrous, on two grounds. First of all, the modern right in America believes in less government, Hitler believed in more (with gun control, national healthcare, mandatory public schools, a smoking ban, etc. Hitler wanted more government in everyone’s life). America’s modern right defends vehemently the free market and capitalism on the grounds that it is the most efficient economic system ever made, and it’s completely true. Hitler hated capitalists and the free market, being a socialist. Hitler hated the establishment of rich folks and a government with checks and balances as well as Germany’s constitution, America’s modern right defends all of those American counterparts. Finally, Hitler hated traditional religion (something most modern American conservatives hold dear to them, in both theory and practice) and wanted it to be replaced by his nationalism.

The differences between Hitler (and Mussolini’s Italy) and the modern American right are very clear, and this is why no one should call you a Fascist.

The Truth About Why Obama is Winning

How Obama is winning has been a question of great matter to me lately. I just can’t stop thinking about how on earth he’s still continued this amazing climb of his despite his series of gaffes and things that would destroy any other politician.

His African blood certainly isn’t hurting him: guilty white youths are anxious to atone for the sins of their fathers, black people are dying to elect “one of their own” to the White House, and latte-liberals, too, remain guilty about race. But that alone is not nearly enough for him to overcome all of these things. Obama’s race is also helping him greatly with regards to the ancient problem of the McGovern/Stevenson style latte-liberal, far-left, upper-class Democrat. These Democrats have traditionally had great trouble with a generally cynical black vote. Obama takes blacks instantly while also picking up the students, rich, naïve whites, and, frankly, air headed moderates that the traditional far-leftist can reel in.

One could pass it off on the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media. This, too, has merit: the backlash over the ABC moderators, George Stephanopolous and Charlie Gibson, asking many questions in the debate about the many controversies surrounding Obama. (Rob Novak stated that, having watched every presidential debate since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon one, he had never seen a candidate challenge the moderator’s authority and grounds for asking such questions; Obama did it at least eight times.) Mainline media bias is definitely aiding Obama. But this, even when combined with his being half-black, is again not enough to make up for all of his mistakes.

The third of the four reasons for Obama’s Teflon jacket is the man’s talent for words and talent for shifting around as much as need be. In every controversy, he has shown the adept ability to slither around it like a snake, mixing excuses, outright lies, and foggy-half truths with the real truth to dilute his whole response to a point of inexplicable elasticity. He can stretch it as far as he needs to (as shown by his claiming to denounce Reverend Wright, when he truly only denounced a few of Wright’s comments) to cover anything. Then, with his questioner and listener sufficiently confused by his foggy answer, he can say, “but you know, let’s move on, let’s move to a politics of hope and not of criticism, etc.” He has done this extremely well with every controversy, and this is another reason he’s been so invincible.

(A slightly less obvious but still great aid to Obama amongst moderates is his voice itself. In the paraphrased words of Mark Steyn, National Review columnist, Obama’s Marxist words about redistributing the profits of the oil and pharmaceutical corporations can all sound so reasonable when he uses his silky baritone, even as we forget the economic foundation of the free market and right to do what we please with our money, one of the pillars of America. Another example is his suggestion that his Supreme Court picks’ most important attribute will be to simply understand the problems people are having, tossing out the entire notion of objective law-enforcement, a second pillar of America and any other good nation in history.)

The fourth and final reason is something most people don’t talk about: this entire nation is simply sick of and disgusted by the Clintons. This wave of Obamania that began in Iowa back in January has swept over the country, and it is in no small part due to the uneasy dissatisfaction with the Clintons within what are now Obama’s three key constituencies: blacks, high-income liberals, and young voters. The Clinton’s great mistake is that they built a domination of the Democratic party on a proverbial throne of bayonets. The problem with thrones of bayonets is that while they’re handy in the short term, you can’t sit on them for long. Sooner or later, some young upstart is going to come out of nowhere and displace you, due to the dissatisfaction the people have with your rule. That is exactly what is happening to the Clintons, and essentially, that is why I believe that this election has been basically over since Super Tuesday: no matter what she says, almost no matter what he does, at the end of the day, he’s Barack Obama and she’s Hilary Clinton.

And that’s why this election is over, when it comes down to it.

Hindsight on Iraq

Republicans don’t often talk about the elephant in the living room of this whole Iraq affair: whether we should have gone in or not in the first place. It’s obvious enough to about 95% of Republicans that staying is a necessity, but should we have gone in? I think some 80% of Republicans supported it at the time, but how many of us are having second thoughts? I know I am. It was highly convincing at the time and I think we made the right call with regards to the intelligence that we had.

But what if we’d known that Iraq evidently didn’t have or, at least, didn’t have nearly as many WMD’s as we had thought (they may have been there, they may still be there, but it looks as if, until further notice, most of our intelligence was flawed)? What if we’d known that Iraq’s ties to terrorists weren’t nearly as strong as Iran’s? Assuming we’d know all that, what would we have done differently?

I now believe that going into Iraq was a mistake. Not a terrible one, but in hindsight, two other countries warranted more serious consideration, in my view: North Korea and Iran. Iran warrants such consideration for its meddling in Afghanistan as well as its attempted bullying of the Persian Gulf Arab states, all U.S. allies. Iran’s continued support of anti-Israeli terrorist organizations is another factor.

Those are all convincing enough on the surface, but most of Iran’s sins didn’t happen until the Iraq war did. (I’m not excusing them or saying they wouldn’t have happened eventually, I’m just saying that we had no idea if they’d happen in Spring of 2003.) That’s why I believe North Korea should’ve been the target of a U.S. invasion, if one had to happen.

North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006. Prior to that, it had been repeatedly beating its chest about its nuclear program and how it would soon have a nuclear weapon. North Korea was bragging about its most powerful of WMD’s while Saddam was suing for his own innocence in that area. Nuclear proliferation is the most important foreign-policy issue of our time. So why wasn’t North Korea’s nuclear program, clearly much further along than Saddam’s WMD programs, given more attention?

Many reasons made North Korea a much more complex issue than Iraq. To start, North Korea’s military was and is infinitely more efficient and competent than Saddam’s in 2003 Iraq. Of course, I doubt it’d last more than 2 months against the combined United States and South Korean forces, but the military casualties on all would’ve been much, much heavier. That’s bad PR, as you know, and ever since Desert Storm, Americans have been spoiled to the kind of low-casualty, quick and clean wars that come two or three times a century.

Even more complicating was the issue of civilian casualties. Though it’s difficult to gauge city’s populations for a number of reasons, I’m pretty sure the general consensus is that the world’s six largest cities are Shanghai (China), Tokyo (Japan), New York (I hope you know), Seoul (South Korea), Sau Paulo (Brazil), and Mexico City (I hope you know this one, too). Seoul is the immediate target of North Korea’s aggression. That’s because it is only about 20 miles south of the North Korean-South Korean border, well within range of North Korean conventional artillery. Seoul would take great damage inevitably and would also possibly be the target of a nuclear weapon (if not, Tokyo, a city which, with its outskirts, isn’t much smaller than California in population, would be next in line).

Basically, it would get very messy very fast, if the United States’ air force couldn’t take out North Korea’s nuclear launch sites fast enough. However, North Korea had no known nuclear weapons in 2003. Conventional weapons could possibly have harmed South Korea and even Japan, but not anything like nuclear ones would.

Ah, but North Korea didn’t have anything to do with terrorists, you might say!

North Korea actually had everything to do with terrorists, simply because they are terrorists. In fact, like the Taliban, they are the worst kind of terrorists: those who have unlimited power to enforce their terror over a large population. Al Qaeda’s most efficient terror is a few car bombs, or, when they’re at their evil “best”, an attack like 9/11. The North Korean government holds an entire country under lock and key. All the horrors of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany combined live on today in North Korea: concentration camps, dissidents being tortured and murdered, the total repression of free speech or religion, the lack of any real press, etc. North Korea gets so little attention for these things because it gets so little attention in general due to its existence as the most sealed nation in the world. What comes in is completely controlled and minimal. What goes out is almost nothing.

The most pertinent point regarding the idea of invading North Korea instead of Iraq is that an invasion of North Korea would not advance the War on Terror. That’s true, in a way. However, I do ask you, in the long term: what do you think North Korea’s going to start doing when it has significant stockpiles of nukes? What would help its permanently-struggling economy? To sell them, of course, or at least their technology. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda, Russian separatists, Hamas, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba… it doesn’t matter to the Koreans.

(The Saudi Arabians will be the first in line, partially due to their great wealth. If a Democratic president is elected in 2008, the Saudis will have extra incentive to purchase a nuclear weapon, as that means that the U.S. has a much smaller commitment to winning in Iraq and protecting them, and it means Iran is almost guaranteed to get nuclear weapons; something that scares the daylights out of the Saudis.)

If Al Qaeda gets its hands on a North Korean nuclear weapon, as difficult as that would be compared to the higher bidders out there, or learns how to build a weapon from North Korean scientists, we’re going to find out just how much North Korea has to do with the War on Terror real fast.

What’s worse is that North Korea is possibly already setting off a chain reaction in the Far East. We don’t know for sure, but it’s not a stretch to imagine South Korea, Japan and Taiwan getting edgy about China and North Korea (one country bent on an empire of sorts and another country with a crazy rogue dictator who cares nothing for his people) being the only two countries with nuclear weapons in their region. Much like with the Saudi Arabian-Iranian relationship, if America is not committed to defending its friends against the bad guys, they’re going to defend themselves, likely by obtaining nuclear weaponry. (I have no problem with countries being able to defend themselves, but you can’t keep increasing the number of nuclear armed nations without limit and expect nobody to use one eventually.) And why should Japan, South Korea and Taiwan trust us when Iraq couldn’t (that is, if a Democrat is elected)?

Make no mistake, I support winning in Iraq unconditionally and don’t regret it too much. I simply feel taking care of the North Korean problem is greater in the United States’ long term interests as well as the world’s. Iraq, however, if we win it, will have turned out to not be the kind of mistake that I wish we could make all the time: we will have drawn Al Qaeda into semi-open conflict and beat them soundly in a country whose religious and ethnic stability is much worse than any other country in the world (a dream scenario for Al Qaeda). If we do that, Iraq may have indeed turned out to be the better choice. If not, it’s going to have been an awful one.

East and South Asia, however, are where the U.S. needs to turn its eyes to next.

Obama’s Wright Problem Returns

Barack Obama’s latest troubles include our old friend, Reverend Wright. Wright has now resurfaced, looking, if possible, even more crazed, angry and ignorant than before. This time, he did it in front of the National Press Club and, whilst cheered wildly on by many blacks present, mocked Dick Cheney’s patriotism, obviously regretted nothing, and reiterated his prior points.

Further compounding the situation, a new piece of a sermon preached in 2003, evidently, has emerged. In this one, our favorite preacher is expressing his hate for the war in Iraq. But that’s not it: he goes on to speak of how the U.S. Marines, or rather our U.S. Marines, are the “exact same as Al Qaeda, doing the exact same things as Al Qaeda under a different flag”. He also says we are doing the same holy war as Al Qaeda and simply praying to a different God. Keep in mind that Wright did not say this newly at any of his recent media engagements, but instead said this years ago. Obama also has not, to my knowledge, denied hearing this directly in the church (I’ve not seen him asked about it).

How has Obama reacted? He’s hurt. Hurt that Wright is personally betraying him and their relationship has now changed. Not because Wright said anything new. (The only thing he said new was the idea that black children have a wholly different way of learning than white children because of a fundamentally different mind, in the context of it as an excuse for black children being less successful than whites in school.) Obama is mad because Wright has now said it likely in direct defiance of Obama’s pleas with him to shut up and go away. This textbook case of narcissism speaks clearly: Obama can tolerate anyone as long as they hate someone or something other than him, but when you take the fight to his door, it angers him. Well, “anger” isn’t truly the right word, I think. “Offended” is much better for describing his demeanor. (I wonder sometimes if Obama is actually capable of any anger, so above-it-all he thinks himself.) Basically, he’s ok with it when his crazed Rottweiler is mauling his neighbors, but it is only when it bites him that he takes it seriously.

Even more telling is Obama’s statement that this Wright is “not the man I knew 20 years ago.”

Oh, really? Because Wright now doesn’t have the grace to keep his radical views to himself and help a brother out, and instead is saying these things repeatedly and in the open to the detriment of Obama? Obama’s sudden repulsion is laughable. Does he think that just because something was said a long time ago, it can be shrugged off, even if the person doesn’t apologize or change his mind? That would be consistent with the fact that Obama has “friendly” relations with an ex-domestic terrorist, William Ayers, who says he didn’t do enough to take down the United States. His excuse for that is “I was 8 years old when he bombed the Pentagon.”

And I was 4 years old when Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City. If he were still alive, never caught, and wishing he had done more, I would never so much as shake his hand. Not when I’m 17, not when I’m 77. Obama’s calling age as an excuse is essentially making the statement “I didn’t know about it when it happened, so it’s ok for me to continue to pretend to not know about it now, even though I know about it.”

The average six year old has better logic than that.

In conclusion, all of these things are, again, not a question of patriotism but of judgment and perspective. We have a man running for president who’s only offended enough to get off of his rear by “God D*** America,” only offended by “the U.S. Marines and Al Qaeda are the same,” and “the government created AIDS to kill off people of color,” when they are to his harm during a campaign, not when they are made in a sermon to a congregation of thousands, including children. He’s a man who thinks that because he was 8 years old when William Ayers was murdering and destroying out of hate for this country, it’s an excuse for being friendly with Ayers 35 years later.

And he’s the exact same man who wants to sit down and have tea with Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il, and Mahmoud Amendenijad, murderers and dictators all (the last two of which, it is important to note, have attempted to spread nuclear technology to anti-American states and have killed many American soldiers by supplying insurgents with weaponry in Iraq, respectively). He’s the same man that wishes to be the most powerful individual in the world. The same man to run your healthcare, run a war for our freedom, jostle with Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao for global supremacy, keep our military running, and protect this country from Osama Bin Laden and company.

You make the call.

Limbaugh

While listening to Rush Limbaugh today, I heard him have a conversation with a caller who was denouncing Limbaugh’s comments that we Republicans “want there to be riots in the street like 1968” at the Democratic convention. The caller’s points were numerous: he first made the point that people and property get damaged in riots. After that, he stated that it’s going to look bad to the rest of the world if we’re having riots over elections here in the heart of democracy. Finally, he said that’s not what we want because we want unity, not division in our country.

I thought his points were pretty good, on the whole, especially the first and second. Rush, however, decried the second and third. I agree somewhat with Limbaugh regarding the third point: division within the Democratic Party is not the same as division within the country. However, the conclusion Rush further drew is that America is not about unity: it’s about ideas competing and forcing their way through the process to see who will win. That’s only honestly true as it pertains to peace, and that is something we miss here in America: democracy, freedom, and war are a trio of events/ideas that exist extremely tenuously. During all of America’s wars, there have only been three in which Americans did not have a complete outpouring of support for the war: Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. See a pattern? A tie, a loss, and an undecided, as of now.

My point is that in modern war, only the state who controls and combines the political, economic and military forces of its territory may win. Any country who lacks any of these three components will lose a war against an opponent who has them. The Soviet Union combined all three by having them be one, during the Second World War: political propaganda and anger towards the Germans fueled the Russian people to support the war unhesitatingly, the Soviet economy was simply another branch of its government, and its military was easily in the top 5 most effective of all time. The United States created an equally effective military through great support for the war, and an amiable and respectful relationship between government and business.

To call upon division as Limbaugh blatantly does is excellent, commendable and preferable in peace, but in war, it is to invite disaster. Douglas MacArthur, a man who knew a thing or two about war, once said that “it is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it.” Another man who knew something of war, Abraham Lincoln, once famously stated that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” (though perhaps this quotation was targeted not at war but at running a country, it applies to war as well). We cannot win a war without at least 80% of the public behind it, and that is why unity is so critical now.

The caller’s second point, that question of what the world will see when they see the Democrats rioting in the streets, was another highly valid one. Limbaugh, characteristic of his simplistic analysis of foreign policy, said “screw the world!” of course, asking the caller if he was just “trying to please the Europeans.” He took the caller’s point wrong, in my opinion. Of course we shouldn’t make our decisions or care much what the Europeans think: they already hate us. They always will, most likely. Europe is not the world, however. In fact, it is very, very far from it. What does it say to Iraq? What does it say to Afghanistan? What does it say to struggling Africans who wish to democratize their countries? What does it say to Venezuelans? What does it say to the Tibetans who struggle for freedom? What does it say to Russian democrats who are hoping to some day be like us? What happens when Iran and North Korea play videos and show images of the riots to their people as propaganda? Limbaugh doesn’t answer that because he still thinks that when you talk about what the world thinks, you’re worrying about Germany, Britain, and France.

The Europeans may draw whatever conclusions they please: they are allies, trading partners and little else. In fact, it is Limbaugh whose conclusions about Europe’s importance are wrongheaded: their individual importance is already eclipsed by the United States, Russia, Japan, China and India. Japan and China are extremely major U.S. trading partners, Russia still holds the distinction of being the only other major nuclear superpower in the world, and the up-and-coming India is the world’s largest democracy. Indeed, why do we still focus so much of both our like and dislike, approval and disapproval, love and hate, on our Western European partners? I’m not entirely sure.

In any case, though, riots at the Democratic convention, while they may be in Republican’s best interests, are not in America’s best interests.

Beck

There was a time long, long ago, in a living room not too far away, when I saw Glenn Beck’s TV show and found him refreshing, insightful and entertaining. Alas, that day is no more. Beck is known for his passionate warnings (read: alarmism) and fancies himself a great whistleblower when no one else is. I once called Glenn Beck an airhead, and I stand by that statement. Beck is not a stereotypical airhead, understand me, but he is the type of airhead that, like most conservative talk show hosts, has no stomach for facts and objective truth. Furthermore, he’s also a terrible debater (like most talk show hosts), which is why 9/10 guests he invites on he invites on to agree with him. His lack of understanding is especially scary when he doesn’t know his own power.

My biggest quibble with Beck is his handling of our economic “crisis”. He blows the horn every night, sounding the evils of our impending depression (he sometimes says it will be worse than the Great Depression) and warning us all that our economy is going down in flames. By the way, our culture is going down in flames due to illegal immigration, all the liberals are fascists that are trying to take us down, Hilary Clinton is a raging Communist, big business is waging an enormous conspiracy to destroy America’s sovereignty, and Iran has the power right now to annihilate the United States in two weeks. That’s what you’d think if you watched Glenn Beck’s show.

Like any good lies, all of these have some truth to them. Our economy is in a bit of trouble, our culture is degrading slightly due to illegal immigration, some liberals are fascists whether they realize it or not, Hilary Clinton harbors some Communistic tendencies, big business is unintentionally damaging our nation’s sovereignty to some small degree, and Iran is a threat. But that’s the problem with Beck: not only does he hardly ever dwell on solutions, but he overstates problems to such an enormous level that they sometimes are self-fulfilling prophecies.

Take the economy. Beck has been saying it’s all going to crash soon, as have a couple of others, and he complains that others won’t say it in public but know it. No, Mr. Beck, this little slow in growth (that’s what it is, a slow in growth, we have not had net decrease in GDP in years upon years) is not the start of the next Great Depression. It is going to be worse than it might be because of people like you complaining 24/7 about how awful it is, even when it’s not that awful. The market is all about perception: it’s what influences stock purchases, money spending, etc. and that’s what runs the market. Beck and others raging about how awful it is will NOT help under ANY circumstances.

Another smaller complaint I have with Beck is his decrying the raunchy commercials advertising some new TV show on one of those really-high numbered channels that’s pretty sexual. Fair enough. The problem is that he’s showing the ads all over on his TV show, just like Bill O’Reilly does (I can only hope that Beck didn’t show it over… and over… and over… and over like O’Reilly does). How are you supposed to combat them if you don’t show them? I’m not really sure. But I have another question: how are you supposed to combat them if you do show them? Is Beck’s aim even to combat them, or is he trying to turn heads and gain viewers, both of the “Jesus wouldn’t like that, I wish this was the old glory days, America is a bunch of pagans today,” type and the “wow, cool!” type? What’s he trying to accomplish? Raised awareness? What’s that awareness going to do? What is Beck thinking?

Probably not much. Beck has stated that the rationale for his program is that most people already know the news of the day before the 6-7 time slot, they just want to know what to think about it. If only his program acted upon this. When you watch his show, you’re not being told what to think or do about the news of the day, you’re being shown the personal reaction of an entertaining guy to the news that day. That’s all it is.

Perhaps people like that, evidently quite a few do. I, however, watch the news to get a mix of learning and learnt opinions regarding the facts. That’s the same reason I subscribe to the National Review and Weekly Standard: intelligent, well thought out opinions being expressed in a rational ways detailing both a start of a problem or success, the middle of it, and their recommendation to end the problem or prolong the success.

Which is why, I am sad to say, I no longer intend to take Glenn Beck seriously.