On tonight's episode of his Fox News program, Glenn Beck made a fitful stab at appearing reasonable and called for a “real dialogue” with progressives. So what is a real dialogue for Beck? Well mostly it sounds an awful lot like what he's always been doing: ascribing the worst possible motives, tactics and historical influences to his political opponents. Like so:

BECK: Starting the modern propaganda: Edward Bernays. It was taken from him, used by the Nazis. He knew it was propaganda. It was such a bad name that he had to do what all progressives do: they just change the name of something that everyone went, “Ooh, that's bad.” Just change the name. Don't change the tactics. Just change the name. But that's what the tactics are: Nazi tactics. Nazi tactics are progressive tactics first. And so they use those tactics. That's the barking dogs around the herd.

Maybe that doesn't sound much like real dialogue to you, but that's only because you're confusing Beck's version of it with intellectually honest discourse and the free exchange of ideas. Here's what he actually defined “real dialogue” as earlier in the show:

BECK: Well let's have a different dialogue and conversation entirely. Let's not say, “Hey, he called us Nazis! How dare you say that?” Or, “Glenn Beck said that this-- Nazis were using progressive--” Let's have a real dialogue, shall we?

Oh! So in Becktopia, “real dialogue” only happens when Glenn Beck accuses you of using “Nazi tactics” and you don't bother to defend yourself. I can feel the reasonableness washing over me already.

Of course, Beck had to cap the episode by reciting part of Martin Niemoller's poem, “First they came...” You know, the one that starts with: “First they came for the Jews / and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.”

Just in case the earlier Nazi references were a little too subtle for you.