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Political views
Beck has described himself as a conservative with libertarian leanings.[72] Among his core values Beck lists personal responsibility, private charity, the right to life, freedom of religion, limited government, and family as the cornerstone of society.[73] Beck also believes in low national debt, and has said "A conservative believes that debt creates unhealthy relationships. Everyone, from the government on down, should live within their means and strive for financial independence."[74] Beck supports individual gun ownership rights and is against gun control legislation.[75]
Beck believes that there is a lack of evidence that human activity is the main cause of global warming.[76] He also says there is a legitimate case that global warming has, at least in part, been caused by mankind, and has tried to do his part by buying a home with a "green" design.[77] He also views the American Clean Energy and Security Act as a form of wealth redistribution, and has promoted a petition rejecting the Kyoto Protocol.[78]
Countering progressivism
"What’s the difference between a communist or socialist and a progressive? Revolution or evolution? One requires a gun and the other eats away slowly."
— Glenn Beck, keynote address at the February 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference[79][80]
Glenn Beck's progressive "Tree of Revolution" chalk board, from the September 18, 2009, episode of his television show. The "roots" of the tree (from L to R) are made up Che Guevara, Woodrow Wilson, and Saul Alinsky, while the "trunk" is the Students for a Democratic Society and Cloward–Piven strategy. Comprising the "money leaves" of the tree (from L to R) are Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Wade Rathke, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Dale Rathke, President Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Valerie Jarrett, Apollo Alliance, Van Jones, Leo Gerard, Carl Pope, Ruben Aronin, and Jeff Jones.[81]
During his 2010 keynote speech to Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Beck wrote the word "progressivism" on a chalkboard and declared, "This is the disease. This is the disease in America", adding "progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution!"[79][80] According to Beck, the progressive ideas of men such as John Dewey, Herbert Croly, and Walter Lippmann, influenced the Presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson; eventually becoming the foundation for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.[79] Beck believes that such progressivism infects both main political parties and threatens to "destroy America as it was originally conceived."[79] In Beck’s book Common Sense, he argues that "progressivism has less to do with the parties and more to do with individuals who seek to redefine, reshape, and rebuild America into a country where individual liberties and personal property mean nothing if they conflict with the plans and goals of the State."[79]
A collection of progressives whom Beck has referred to as "Crime Inc", comprise what Beck contends is a clandestine conspiracy to take over and transform America.[82][83][84] Some of these individuals include Cass Sunstein, Van Jones, Andy Stern, John Podesta, Wade Rathke, Joel Rogers and Francis Fox Piven.[82][85] Other figures tied to Beck's "Crime Inc" accusation include Al Gore, Franklin Raines,[86] Maurice Strong, George Soros,[87] John Holdren and President Barack Obama.[83] According to Beck, these individuals already have or are surreptitiously working in unison with an array of organizations and corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae, ACORN, Apollo Alliance, Tides Center, Chicago Climate Exchange, Generation Investment Management, Enterprise Community Partners, Petrobras, Center for American Progress, and the SEIU; to fulfill their progressive agenda.[83][87] In his quest to root out these "progressives", Beck has compared himself to Israeli Nazi hunters, vowing on his radio show that "to the day I die I am going to be a progressive-hunter. I’m going to find these people that have done this to our country and expose them. I don’t care if they’re in nursing homes."[20]
Historian Sean Wilentz has denounced Beck's progressive-themed conspiracy theories and "gross historical inaccuracies", countering that Beck is merely echoing the decades-old "right-wing extremism" of the John Birch Society.[88] According to Wilentz, Beck's "version of history" places him in a long line of figures who have challenged mainstream political historians and presented an inaccurate opposing view as the truth, stating:
Glenn Beck is trying to give viewers a version of American history that is supposedly hidden. Supposedly, all we historians — left, right and center — have been doing for the past 100 years is to keep true American history from you. And that true American history is what Glenn Beck is teaching. It's a version of history that is beyond skewed. But of course, that's what Beck expects us to say. He lives in a kind of Alice in Wonderland world, where if people who actually know the history say what he's teaching is junk, he says, 'That's because you're trying to hide the truth.'[88]Conservative David Frum, the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, has also spoken of Beck's propensity for negationism, remarking that "Beck offers a story about the American past for people who are feeling right now very angry and alienated. It is different enough from the usual story in that he makes them feel like they’ve got access to secret knowledge."[20]
Ideological influences
Political and historical
"The old American mind-set that Richard Hofstadter famously called the paranoid style – the sense that Masons or the railroads or the Pope or the guys in black helicopters are in league to destroy the country – is aflame again, fanned from both right and left ... No one has a better feeling for this mood, and no one exploits it as well, as Beck. He is the hottest thing in the political-rant racket, left or right."
— David Von Drehle, Time Magazine[28]An author with ideological influence on Beck is W. Cleon Skousen [emphasis added] (1913–2006), a prolific conservative political writer, American Constitutionalist and faith-based political theorist.[89][90] As an anti-communist supporter of the John Birch Society,[91] and limited-government activist,[92] Skousen, who was Mormon, wrote on a wide range of subjects: the Six-Day War, Mormon eschatology, New World Order conspiracies, even parenting.[92] Skousen believed that American political, social, and economic elites were working with Communists to foist a world government on the United States.[79] Beck praised Skousen's "words of wisdom" as "divinely inspired", referencing Skousen's The Naked Communist[93] and especially The 5,000 Year Leap (originally published in 1981),[92] which Beck said in 2007 had "changed his life".[92] According to Skousen's nephew, Mark Skousen, Leap reflects Skousen's "passion for the United States Constitution", which he "felt was inspired by God and the reason behind America’s success as a nation."[94] The book is touted by Beck as "required reading" to understand the current American political landscape and become a "September twelfth person".[92] Beck authored a foreword for the 2008 edition of Leap and Beck's on-air recommendations in 2009 propelled the book to number one in the government category on Amazon for several months.[92] In 2010, Matthew Continetti of the conservative Weekly Standard criticized Beck's conspiratorial bent, terming him "a Skousenite."[79] Additionally, Alexander Zaitchik, author of the 2010 critical book Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, which features an entire chapter on "The Ghost of Cleon Skousen",[95] refers to Skousen as "Beck's favorite author and biggest influence", while noting that he authored four of the ten books on Beck's 9-12 Project required-reading list.[96]
In his discussion of Beck and Skousen, Continetti also stated that one of Skousen's works "draws on Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope (1966), which argues that the history of the 20th century is the product of secret societies in conflict",[79] noting that in Beck's novel The Overton Window, which Beck describes as "faction" (fiction based on fact), one of his characters states "Carroll Quigley laid open the plan in Tragedy and Hope, the only hope to avoid the tragedy of war was to bind together the economies of the world to foster global stability and peace."[79]
Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz postulates that alongside Skousen, Robert W. Welch, Jr., founder of the John Birch Society, is a key ideological foundation of Beck's worldview.[97] According to Wilentz:
The popularity of Beck’s broadcasts, has brought neo-Birchite ideas to an audience beyond any that Welch or Skousen might have dreamed of ... He (Beck) attacks all the familiar bogeymen: the Federal Reserve System (which he asserts is a private conglomerate, unaccountable to the public); the Council on Foreign Relations (born of a "progressive idea" to manipulate the media in order to "let the masses know what should be done"); and a historical procession of evildoers, including Skousen’s old target Colonel House and Welch’s old target Woodrow Wilson. His sources on these matters, quite apart from Skousen’s books, can be unreliable. (For example) on September 22nd, 2010, amid a diatribe about House, Beck cited a passage from Secrets of the Federal Reserve, by Eustace Mullins. The book, commissioned in 1948 by Ezra Pound, is a startlingly anti-Semitic fantasy of how a Jewish-led conspiracy of all-powerful bankers established the Federal Reserve in service of their plot to dominate the world.[97]
Other books that Beck regularly cites on his programs are Amity Shlaes’s The Forgotten Man, Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen’s A Patriot's History of the United States, and Burt Folsom Jr.’s New Deal or Raw Deal.[79] Beck has also urged his listeners to read The Coming Insurrection, a book by a French Marxist group[79] discussing what they see as the imminent collapse of capitalist culture.[98]
In addition, on June 4, 2010, Beck endorsed Elizabeth Dilling's 1936 work The Red Network: A Who's Who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots, remarking "this is a book, The Red Network, this came in from 1936. People — (Joseph) McCarthy was absolutely right ... This is, who were the communists in America."[99] Beck was criticized however by an array of people, including Menachem Z. Rosensaft and Joe Conason, who noted that Dilling was a proud anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer.[100][101][102]
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My favourite article in WP is that on the Gray Jay - but this one, like many others which I would prefer not to have to read, brings many elements and references into one accessible page. [And yes, my mixed American and Canadian spelling is deliberate.]
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