Beck declares phrases "lives in the real world," is "compassionate" and "understands social justice" are really "code language for Marxism"
May 04, 2009 12:22 pm ET
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He's telling his audience that it's okay for them to keep things dangerously simple. He's encouraging them to operate in a world where their opinion should be their only guide. For Beck's audience, ignorance is bliss. For Beck himself, it's a living.
"lives in the real world," -- Marxist??? Hmmm, facts AND realty are now Marxist and the GOPer's, NeoCons, and Freepers wonder why people final rejected their lunatic view of the world and political landscape.
The Right reminds me of Cypher from "The Matrix" -- "I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss." The Right is scared of realty because the realty is we (the perople) have found them out.
I have to wonder: will Glenn Beck next tell us that solidarity is also a code word for Marxism?
Wasn't part of Palin's "charm" the fact that she was a Washington outsider who was from the "real world" and Main Street USA? Is she a Marxist too?
The truth is, that intelligent and reasonable people can believe in either the options offered by the Left or the Right. Both have their intellectual points of appeal and the differences begin at the very most basic levels of what human beings think about the nature of the world they live in and of their fellow human beings.
Beck is wrong in not having yet learned to differentiate between Marxist style socialism and European or Progressive style socialism. As advocates of the latter, most of you can confidently say, "I am not a Marxist." The phrases he cites are "code-phrases" for Progressivist-Socialism not Marxist-Socialism.
What Glen Beck does understand with unusual clarity is the American Federalist movement of the Eighteenth Century, how it provided a foundation, in the Constitution for an order of magnitude advancement in the concept of a "free society" and how those who believe that they can use new technology and insight to establish a more humane and benevolent society are blocked from doing so by that Federalist movement and so see it as their enemy and seek to undo it.
The problem many of you seem to have is that you are unable to distinguish between the different types of "Conservatives". For the sake of brevity I'll say there are two larger groupings. One follows the lead of either Madison or Jefferson and believes that if the people grant government the power to fix problems for the people it will eventually use that power to dictate the wishes of its members to the people. You cannot have a government with the power for doing good things without also having a government with the power for doing bad things. But you can have a government in which the various sources and avenues of power are so divided between different parts of government and different parts of the private sector that no individual or group can likely seize them all without some rival checking their progress.
The Federalists thought a further necessity would be a check against the disintegration of society and the incursions of other societies provided by a federal government with strong but very narrowly defined powers.
The Jeffersonian Republicans or later, Democratic-Republicans, believed that you could not vest even such narrow powers in a federal system and the authority of state and local governments should be kept supreme.
Both sides believed that the greatest threat to individual freedom lay in the tendancy of governments to accumulate power unto themselves and would weep to hear the lot of you speak.
The Progressive movement arose in the latter Nineteenth Century based on the idea that through scientific advancements including the social sciences we could design governments capable of managing societies with unheard of skill and efficiency and capable of redesigning societies that extended the wealth of civilization more equitably than had ever been done before. Of course, to tredesign society would require power in the hands of the designers, but that power would be held in check by democratic processes and the constitutional limitation of powers through divisions of authority and gaurantees of individual rights.
Both alternatives make fundamental assumptions about the nature of existence and of humanbeings. Depending on those assumptions, one will seem more credible than the other. But which of us would be so arrogant as to claim that we posess the true understanding of either existence or humanbeings? Each of us makes the best guess they can based on their experience. But because we choose one way or the other doesn't make the other side necessarily wrong or their assumptions foolish.
When the Supreme Court decided in Bush v. Gore to stop a STATE's right to recount its vote, conservatives applauded and favored the decision of that federal branch of government over its state's counterparts. When Bush spent record amounts of money and ran up debt, more conservatives voted to re-elect him in 2004 than did in 2000. Beck was leading the charge.
His rhetoric is over the top and extreme and he often seems to use graphics of Nazis, Stalin etc to make simple points.
If we here on this site are advocates of socialism, please provide examples.
Please don't come here and advocate that Beck has any handle on intellectual philosophy when the tenets you described were absent from his rhetoric during the past eight years.
I haven't been following Beck for eight years so am unable to dispute what he advocated during that time. I allow for people changing. Now he presents the philosophically insightful points I referred to.
If you are familiar with the Federalist system you'll understand that at this point in time there really is only American Federalism and Socialism. Socialism is the system established in France in the First Republic and consisted then of transferring power and the operations of government from the monarchy to the People's Counsel, that included the bureaucracy, virtually intact. The King was the presumptive owner of everything and everyone within the kingdom. The Democratic government of the people became the new owners of everything and everyone. After the model of the American Constitution they wrote a document called the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It was a very good document that promises limitations on the reach of government and regular elections, etc. It lacks the exhaustive system of checks and balances established in the American Constitution and through it, the free enterprise system. As you know the First Republic fell, France moved through a series of trial governments and is now in its Fourth Republic. By the end of the 19th Century the example of French Democratic-Socialism had inspired the Progressive Movement. The French Revolution had been two pronged, one against the privilege of birth and the other against the wealth and power of the Catholic Church. They sought to replace these with a secular religion based on celebration of the achievements and potential achievements of man and the state. 100 years later, with the dawn of the "age of electricity" Progressives began to believe that it was time to cast off the shackles of tradition and rediscover and reinvent the customs and structures of civilization. They believed they were using technology to solve the problems posed by technology. One of their most agreed on tenets was that democratic society must be brought to serve the needs of the people and that in national governments lay the me3chanisms for studying, planning and coordinating the construction of a more rational society. That activity, more than redistribution of the wealth, is what identifies a socialist system. Progressivism led to a variety of different manifestations. It inspired Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and a whole generation of less controversial characters like Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. In America and elsewhere it took on the name "Liberalism". Under that name it came to dominate both of the major political parties. The Democrats became the home of those who tended to favor a faster change to the planned society. The Republicans tended to favor a slower transition and the preservation of more traditional elements. Both parties had elements of 19th Century Democrats and Republican trends still alive within them. Fiscal conservatives pop up in both parties. But the strongest 19th Century faction in the Republicans has been a coalition of Federalists, Constitutionalists, Originalists, etc. and a Jeffersonian fringe best recognized as Libertarians. In the Democratic Party the Jeffersonians survived most clearly as the Dixiecrats who long opposed the desegregation of the South while defending "states rights." They were purged from the Democrats in the 1960s and only a few relics, like Robert Byrd, former KKK Grand Klaxun remain. Some changed their stance on desegregation and transferred to the Republicans, like Strom Thurman. Since the purge or collapse of the Dixiecrats and the passing of the Scoop Jackson style anti-Communists the Democrats have been dominated by a coalition of movements that all back greater federal government control over a wide range of our lives. Barak Obama is the most clearly pro-socialist Democratic leader since Roosevelt and maybe since Wilson. Socialists want government to have the power to do all sorts of usually arguably good things for the people and generally don't mind them confiscating the wealth of the rich to pay for it. Republican style socialists want the change to that system to be slow and careful and often less comprehensive. Bush was a Republican style socialist, look at his education, aids, prescription coverage and other budget - busting efforts. Still, given the choice between a Bush and a Gore or Kerry, someone like Beck would certainly support Bush then oppose some of his agenda. Now, if you paid attention and didn't spend this time just trying to find some way to attack what I've said, you are prepared to look at the posts on MMFA and see where socialism is being advocated.
You also now have the foundation for the connection between current Progressivist Socialists and the Nationalist Progressivist Socialists that became the Nazis and the Fascists. The history is there and the lineage is real. Socialism has many facets too.
The state in this case had ruled to change the way the votes were counted in a select group of counties where Gore was most likely to pick up extra votes. It was a federal election and though states can determine how they will count the votes they can't insert a different way to count part of the votes because they expect it will change the outcome. That was ruled 9 - 0. When the Florida Supreme Court failed to propose a plan that didn't involve a selective partial recount, the Supreme Court Ruled 5 - 4 to end the exercise. The dissenters did not claim that Florida had met the demand, they just wanted to give them more time. This was an override of a state in a federal election. In essence the Supreme Court ruled 9 - 0 that the Florida Supreme Court had attempted to deny the civil rights of half of its citizens.
You go ahead and complain about Bush centralizing too much power all you want. I don't like slow-socialists any better than fast-socialists. I think I'll disagree on some of the war powers issues, but if you want to beat up on him for the socialistic things he did I'm right behind you.
"The Obamas' plan is to herd American youth into government funded reeducation camps where they will be brainwashed into thinking that America is a racist, oppressive place in need of social change."
Randy