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Glenn Beck continued his eliminationist attacks on progressives yesterday with a novel and absurd comparison:
Beck: History will equate this as, as big as the New Deal or Pearl Harbor. And if you think that's overstating the importance, remember we are talking about one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
As he was talking, the screen behind him showed the bombs falling on ships at Pearl Harbor and smoke billowing up in their aftermath.
Yeah, providing health-care insurance for millions of uninsured Americans is just like horrific and violent attacks that leave thousands of Americans dead.
The point, of course, is that the "progressives" pushing health-care reform are the "enemy within" intent on destroying America.
The rest of the rant was dedicated to exploring this in detail. He dismissed the CBO report that the health-care reform bill would result in a $130 billion deficit reduction in its first ten years by sniffing: "Well, that's a party in my pants!" -- because, according to Beck, it's just a "transition" to making health care a right, "just like FDR" intended. This notion is now being promoted, he said, by Cass Sunstein, who he pronounced "the most evil man, the most dangerous man in America."
You see, it's not deficit reduction that matters -- it's the loss freeeeedom! that HCR represents. HCR, according to Beck, is "slavery" and "oppression":
Beck: I promise you America -- oppression is one promise our government will keep.
Because, of course, decent health care is just so oppressive. Not to mention that it's like bombing thousands of Americans to death.
Obviously, there's no one left among the brass at Fox capable of keeping some kind of rational perspective in their broadcasts at all.
From The Daily Show March 18, 2010. This might not have been one of Jon's funniest segments, but he's got the clown show down pat. Intro above and the full thirteen minute segment below.
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Well, I just got to spend ten blissfully Glenn-Beck-free days in China, which is probably the only place one can safely escape his wingnuttery these days. It's quite a different world there, and certainly nothing like what Beck himself frequently depicts it as (more on that later).
And what better way to reacclimate myself to the USA than to turn on Fox the afternoon of my return and watch yet another of Beck's patented eliminationist attacks on progressives -- followed the next night by yet another?
Ah, some things never change, do they?
On Monday, Beck continued his current theme that "progressives are a disease" by ripping into the effort to push health-care reform through Congress. He again warned that America was being destroyed from within by progressives:
Beck: I was, way back then, I said that America could never be destroyed from the outside. I remember the day that I said it because it was September 11th, and people were freaking out, and I was on my radio program and I said, militarily there is no equal, don't worry, if the world tries to attack us, and we've decided we're not going to bother with smart bombs, we'd control the world in a heartbeat, but that's not who we are.
Don't worry. The only way to destroy America is to rot it from the inside -- collapse our system from the inside. It's got to be one of us that brings us to our knees.
When I said that, I was trying to give hope to people. But I didn't have the full truth, because little did I know that there were people, our own countrymen, who are already here who are on the inside who actually want to do that -- bring our country to its knees. That's insanity.
... Progressives -- progressives are the ones that say you've got to rot America from the inside. You have to be inside in order to bring her down. It has been the plan the whole time. Make progress -- baby steps. Well, progress from where to what? From the Constitution to a democracy. We're not a democracy.
So now that it's happening, why is America surprised? They've been clear for a hundred years. Radical progressives are infecting America! By deceiving unsuspecting people on their true intentions!
A little later, he used the disease metaphor again to describe health-care reform:
Beck: What they're about to pass is not a tumor. Because the doctor can come over here and say, 'Yeah, there's a tumor here, and we've got to go in and cut this out.' I don't know if you can cut this tumor out. Maybe not. But you can try. But what they're about to pass is a bloodstream disease. It will be injected into our system and it will be incurable.
Then on yesterday's show, he continued (h/t Media Matters) to attack the health-care reform effort:
Beck: I think they're gonna pass this thing. They are gonna do whatever it takes to pass this, and they're not going to go the traditional way, they are gonna go the way of snakes and cockroaches. They're gonna crawl out in the cover of darkness, and they're going to pass this, make it happen one way or another.
Beck: It's not about Communists. Never has been about Communists, either. Really hasn't. That's guy's a lunatic fringe. Just like the white supremacists on the other side. Right here! [Points to chalkboard diagram]
This side, up and down! Communists and fascists -- those people are crazy! This is about progressivism. And most people, they're in here -- when they say they are progressive, they don't think they're headed here. But progress -- baby steps -- you are moving toward something! You are moving toward one of these.
This is why they called George Bush a fascist. Because progressives know what's at the end of the progressive road -- Nazis or Communists! Someone has to control your life. Someone will be at the controls.
Communists would like it to be them. Nazis are rooting for their side. I'm not rooting for any side! I'm rooting for this side [points to right side of diagram]. Wrong side of the scale, guy!
Now, there's at least some reason to connect progressivism with Communism, since they are both left-wing phenomena and share at least some values. But Nazism?
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See anything "progressive" there? Actually, you do -- you see it among the pro-immigrant marchers the Nazis are protesting against.
But you'd have a hard time convincing anyone -- especially these neo-Nazis themselves -- that they have anything even remotely to do with "progressivism." Indeed, the very thing that animates them into barbaric bloodlust is the progressive movement -- that is, the desire to destroy it utterly.
As we've explained previously, in the context of Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent Liberal Fascism thesis -- which, of course, is the basis for Beck's lumping of fascism and communism together under the "end of the progressive road" -- what makes these people right-wing extremists is that they not only adopt right-wing political positions, they take them to their most extreme logical (if that's the word for it) outcome:
They not only oppose abortion, they believe abortion providers should be killed.
They not only believe that liberal elites control the media and financial institutions, but that a conniving cabal of Jews is at the heart of this conspiracy to destroy America.
They not only despise Big Government, they believe it is part of a New World Order plot to enslave us all.
They not only defend gun rights avidly, they stockpile them out of fear that President Obama plans to send in U.N. troops to take them away from citizens.
They not only oppose homosexuality as immoral, they believe gays and lesbians deserve the death penalty.
They not only oppose civil-rights advances for minorities, they also believe a "race war" is imminent, necessary and desirable.
And on and on. Every part of the agenda of the agenda of right-wing extremists is essentially an extreme expression of conservative positions. And that, fundamentally, is why American fascism always has been and always will be, properly understood, an unmistakable phenomenon of the Right.
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[Note: I'll be appearing on David Sirota's radio show Tuesday at 8:35 am PST to discuss Beck and his attacks on progressives.]
It's been pretty interesting watching Glenn Beck ratchet up the eliminationist rhetoric in his attacks on progressives in the past couple of months.
The storyline, as you may have gathered, is that the "progressive movement" is the root of all evil in American politics, a "cancer" and a "virus" and a "parasite" that has "infected" both parties. Beck has been doing a lot of fake "history" reporting when it comes to these attacks -- indeed, it tells you everything you need to know that he considers Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as the presidential wellsprings of this Great Evil.
Well, as we observed some time back, there's a great deal of real history that Beck has to omit from his narrative in order to make these claims stick -- particularly the reality that progressive politics created the great American middle class consumer society that he and other right-wingers take for granted now, not to mention the conditions for average Americans before the arrival of progressive politics.
But one of the most interesting omissions from Beck's parade of progressive evils is one of the real achievements of progressive politics in the past half-century -- namely, the advancement of civil rights for minorities, beginning with the civil-rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s. These movements ended Jim Crow and made life better for millions of nonwhites, and created a more just and civil society along the way.
And you know, civil rights was a progressive cause. It still is. The opposition? It has always -- ALWAYS -- been conservatives.
Yet all the time Beck has been bashing progressives, he has simultaneously been hosting shows with audiences of black conservatives wherein they sit around and complain about how mean liberals are to them for being conservative and Beck gets to ask dumb white-guy questions like: "Why not identify yourself as Americans?"
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So here's our question for Glenn Beck: If the progressive movement, as you claim, has been so relentlessly evil and has consistently taken America down the wrong path, what about civil rights?
Was Martin Luther King secretly evil too?
Should we return to pre-progressive policies -- you know, the "separate but equal" status quo of Jim Crow and segregation?
Indeed, your hatred of the "progressive movement" and its effects on American life raise a whole host of similar questions about your views on civil rights.
To wild applause, he labeled this alleged tumor of "community" the supposedly evil "progressivism" -- and he told disciples to "eradicate it" from the nation.
The lesson was eminently clear, coming in no less than the keynote address to one of America's most important political conventions. Beck taught us that a once-principled conservative movement of reasoned activists has turned into a mob -- one that does not engage in civilized battles of ideas. Instead, these torch-carriers, gun-brandishers and tea partiers follow an anti-government terrorist attack by cheering a demagogue's demand for the physical annihilation of those with whom he disagrees -- namely anyone, but particularly progressives, who value "community."
No doubt, some conservatives will parse, insisting Beck was only endorsing the "eradication" of progressivism but not of progressives. These same willful ignoramuses will also likely say that the Nazis' beef was with Judaism but not Jews, and that white supremacists dislike African-American culture but have no problem with black people.
Other conservatives will surely depict Beck's "eradication" line as just the jest of a self-described "rodeo clown" -- merely the "fusion of entertainment and enlightenment," as his radio motto intones. But if Beck is half as smart as he incessantly tells listeners he is, then he knows it's no joke.
What motivates this kind of talk and behavior is called eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.
Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on certain distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the body politic. A close corollary—but not as nakedly eliminationist—are claims that opponents are traitors or criminals and that they pose a threat to our national security.
Eliminationism is often voiced as crude "jokes," a sense of humor inevitably predicated on venomous hatred. And such rhetoric—we know as surely as we know that night follows day—eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.
I compiled the video above with a sampling from the past nine months. In it, you can see Beck call progressives a "cancer" (multiple times), "the disease that's killing us," a "virus," a "parasite," "vampires" who will "suck the life out" of the Democratic Party, and claim that progressives intend the "destruction of the Constitution" and will strike it a "death blow".
As Sirota notes, Beck is taking us down a certain path with this kind of rhetoric, and it always, as Beck himself puts it, "ends badly."
When I first heard North Carolina farmer/carpenter Billy Kennedy-- an actual progressive, non-Blue Dog, real-life Democrat-- was going to run against lunatic fringe hatemonger Virginia Foxx, I was very excited and I realized that Americans from all over the country would be interested in this race. There are few members of Congress as bigoted and contemptible as Foxx. But as I've gotten to know Billy a bit I realize that regardless of how awful Foxx is, he'd make a truly exceptional, classic Representative of the people.
He sounds, refreshingly, like a real life, common sense American, rather than like some politician. If there's some good stuff coming out of the Tea Party movement-- once you wade through all the psychotic racism and extremist rhetoric-- you find the kind of populism many of us crave, including Billy. Believe me, this just doesn't appeal to progressives and Democrats alone-- Billy on the stump:
“The bank bailouts didn’t help keep homeowners in their homes. It only helped the banks who are still paying outrageous bonuses. The mortgage crisis is not over, and keeping families in their homes needs to be a priority.”
When the House passed HR 4626 this week-- a bill to end the anti-trust exemption for Insurance monopolies (which Foxx, predictably, voted to kill-- Billy had a clear response that anyone, even people without law degrees, could understand:
The insurance companies spend most of their waking hours trying to figure out how to avoid paying for people’s medical expenses so they can boost their profit margins. They get away with massive premium price increases and benefits cutting because they have virtually no competition. This is because they enjoy an anti-trust exemption which allows them to engage in price fixing and collusive activity.
The result? By 2008, according to the American Medical Association, a single health insurer controlled 30% or more of the health insurance market in 90% of the metropolitan markets in the country. And, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, health premiums have gone up by 131% for family coverage from 1999 to 2009.
If we are serious about promoting competition among insurance companies to hold down costs, the repeal of the anti-trust exemption is a no-brainer.
People get that and when Blue America announced a couple of days ago that we would be endorsing Billy's candidacy today, there was an immediate outpouring of grassroots contributions that stunned John, Digby and I. We're hoping to give his campaign a boost today with the chat at below in the comments section. But even announcing it has inspired Democrats who still believe in (real) Hope and (real) Change. When Billy explains healthcare reform by saying "It’s not fair for people to work all their lives and then loose everything when they are sick," people who hear him know he's going to go to Washington and work for ordinary North Carolina families, not for the kinds of wealthy and powerful vested interests Virginia Foxx is always catering to (when she isn't demagoging against gay people, public education and regular working families in her own district).
There aren't going to be any clearer choices between an advocate of people-oriented good government and an advocate of maintaining the status quo on behalf of the wealthy powerful special interests than the race in NC-5 between Billy Kennedy and Virginia Foxx. Foxx doesn't think her wealthy backers should be forced to pay taxes to educate a bunch of poor people's children. Billy has a very different perspective on the role of government in a healthy society:
“America needs a vibrant middle class and successful small businesses to survive. The middle class depends on quality public education available for all and jobs that pay a living wage... People have been benefiting from government programs for a long time in this country and still are. What would our Fifth District be like had the rural electric cooperatives not been started by the government? The government is our common wealth, our school systems, secure banking, police and fire departments, roads and water systems belong collectively to us all. And it’s our responsibility to manage our collective wealth wisely.
"No one makes it all on their own. We all benefit from successful government programs. Virginia got her BA, MA and ED from our outstanding public North Carolina Universities and she’s been on the dole ever since. She’s been living off the N.C. taxpayers, gaming the system and now she wants to deny the same opportunity she had to everyone else. Just last weekend she said that she didn’t believe that federal funds should be used for education.
"I went to college with the help of federal programs. Last year’s federal stimulus money went to our colleges and local schools supporting, and in some cases saving teaching positions, in this tough economy. Students don’t get a second chance; you can’t abandon them. If their basic educational needs are not met, they become economically disadvantaged, costing us all more in the end. Countries with higher literacy rates have more developed and thriving democracies. Investing in education is money well spent. We need an educated workforce to compete. We need good jobs. We need to be leading the world in new technologies, green technologies. We need to promote these new green technologies with tax credits at the state and federal levels. We need to renew our manufacturing base. Bring the work back home."
NC-5 in northwestern North Carolina isn't exactly prime territory for an outspoken Democrat running a grassroots campaign. Not only does the district have a horrifying PVI of R +15, the DCCC is ignoring the race entirely-- which explains why there isn't a Blue Dog running, and Billy's campaign is a 100% people-powered effort. Boone, Mount Airy (the model for Andy Griffith's Mayberry), and the Piedmont suburbs of Winston-Salem only gave Obama 38% of its vote in 2008, while re-electing Foxx with 58% of the vote. But between a Tea Party candidate campaigning against Foxx from the right and Billy's plain-spoken on the ground outreach, the anti-incumbent wave building nationwide this year could unseat an entrenched Republican in a red district, which is just what Alan Grayson and Eric Massa did with our help last year. Please consider contributing directly to Billy's campaign here at the Blue America page.
Wednesday the House voted overwhelmingly to abolish the exemption the health insurance monopolies have been enjoying from antitrust laws. I spoke to half a dozen candidates running for House seats from around the country, all of whom were very enthusiastic about the action (as you can see at the link above). Today an old Blue America friend, Rep. John Hall, sent us a statement reminding us that he's been talking about doing just this since last summer.
Finally, the House of Representatives has repealed the anti-trust exemption for the health insurance industry. I have been talking about this since last August, when it elicited applause from progressives and conservatives alike in my health care town hall meetings. I have spoken forcefully in our caucus about the insanity of allowing monopolistic practices, price-fixing, collusion and consolidation by corporations which are gouging the consumer with skyrocketing insurance premiums, shrinking coverage, underpaying of doctors, and refusing coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions.
Today, we finally got a debate and a vote on this first, clear issue pertaining to health care reform. Competition is key in driving down costs for families and small businesses. Monopolies kill competition. I have not heard a credible reason for health insurance companies to have such protection. It is especially obvious when Anthem Blue Cross just proposed a premium hike of 39% for one year, while simultaneously posting record profits and dropping millions more from coverage. I have heard from many of you who have experienced similar hikes from your insurance companies.
Enough is enough. I co-sponsored the legislation that passed by a bipartisan vote of 406-19. Republican Representatives argued strenuously against the bill, then flip-flopped and voted for it. I guess they didn't want to face the voters after casting a vote to protect an industry that clearly does not need protection.
By chance I also happened to be on the phone with Roxanne Conlin, a progressive Democrat running for the Iowa Senate seat currently occupied by anti-health-care fanatic Chuck Grassley. Roxanne is an attorney who "has devoted her law practice in Des Moines, Iowa to representing people who have been injured by others, whether by discrimination, products, doctors or vehicles and has gained national attention and the respect of her peers in the process." She knows quite a lot about why repealing the McCarran-Ferguson Act will be a tremendous boost for the whole cause of health care reform. John and I have invited her to C&L today (at noon, PT) to talk about this issue as the bill moves on to the Senate, the body she is aspiring to be part of. Meet us-- and Roxanne-- in the comments section.
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Michael Steele went on MSNBC this morning before the health-care summit and began attacking President Obama for a "dog and pony show" -- and claimed that the president should have held this summit a year ago, when things were just getting started.
Republicans were so busy back then concocting plans to scuttle ANY health-care reform, though, that it kinda slipped their minds.
Kudos to Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie for calling him out for it:
STEELE: This whole dog and pony show that we're about to witness today is something that should have taken place a year ago, when the administration first came in last February and laid out its agenda for health care. This is how you should have started it - bipartisan, public forum, CSPAN, your cameras rolling to capture this and to capture, most importantly, what the American people want. And right now, they want us to start over, and I think we should.
TODD: Chairman Steele, in fairness to them, I mean, it was a year ago that they actually had a summit.
GUTHRIE: On March 5th.
TODD: And it wasn't just the legislative leaders. They brought in folks from the industry as well. And that one was televised. So...does that one not count? I'm just curious.
STEELE: Well, apparently it didn't. Because we don't have health care.
You know, you really can't blame Republicans for wanting to fire Steele as the RNC chair, when the level of incompetence is this deep.
But we progressives hope he sticks around, just for the comic relief.
I was out all day and missed most of the reaction to Obama's suggested health-care plan. (Although I did learn from the Washington Post that this reheated version of the Senate bill is the White House team's idea of "going big." Heaven help us, I'd hate to see what "going small" looks like.)
From jumping around the blogs tonight, here's a roundup of some of the more interesting stuff.
From Think Progress:
The Obama plan maintains key elements of the Senate proposal but also incorporates stronger anti-fraud provisions and allows the federal government to review insurance rate hikes. On a call with reporters Pfeiffer insisted that the administration has not determined “on which path to move forward with”, but the bill’s substance suggests that Obama is hoping to bypass a prolonged-Senate debate and use the reconciliation process to fix the Senate bill and convince reluctant House progressives to pass the Senate legislation. “The American people deserve up or down vote on health reform,”Pfeiffer said. “We can get an up or down vote if opposition decides to take extraordinary steps of filibustering health reforms.”
But it’s unclear if progressive House members will embrace the new compromise. While the bill addresses House members’ affordability concerns, increases the excise tax thresholds and completely closes the donut hole in Medicare Part D, the legislation does not include a public option, retains the Senate bill’s state-based exchanges and keeps the start date for most reforms at 2014. (Obama’s plan also retains the Senate’s abortion compromise and most other core provisions).
In its statement, the National Right to Life committee said that the president’s proposal “limits rights of Americans of all ages to use their own money to save their own lives.”
Burke Balch, the director of the National Right to Life Committee’s Powell Center of Ethics, likened the president’s plan to imposing a limit on the cost of restaurant meals.
“It is as though a government, concerned about the high cost of restaurant food, imposed a price limit of $5 per meal, and then asserted that for those who like their restaurant food, nothing will force them to change their eating habits,” the statement said. “The reality, of course, is that restaurants would be unable to afford to offer meals at prices below the cost of their ingredients. Consequently, about all restaurant-goers would be able to get would be fast food.”
Yes, because unlike health care, it's not as if you couldn't buy food and cook it yourself. (Try not to think about it, it'll just make your head hurt.)
NOTE: And this part is truly weird. You know the 31 million number that keeps getting tossed around? I always that was due mostly to Medicaid expansion --- moving the opportunity to get medical care after losing all your assets, like your house, up the income ladder -- but no. Right in the first paragraph:
"The President's [cough] Option" -- sorry, "Proposal" -- makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today. This helps over 31 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable for many more.
It's a tax cut!? Are Republican talking points truly the only ponies left in the stable?
I'm not even gonna try to gild that particular lily.
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Glenn Beck with a bit more of his revisionist history at CPAC 2010 and red meat for the audience there where everything that Ronald Reagan did spread magic fairy dust on the country and the only reason anything is wrong with America is because the evil dirty f%#king hippie progressives are a cancer that is destroying the country.
One of the identifying signs of eliminationist rhetoric, some of you may recall, is that it compares its target bloc of people to a disease (and the deadlier the better).
Last night, Glenn Beck did just that for his national audience on Fox News:
Beck: All right, now, if all of this sounds like a government out of control, go back to the progressive movement. It is not what our founders of this country intended. One hundred years of this movement, and the government growing while our rights are shrinking. I've been saying now for awhile, and it really has clicked in my mind, um, that it is the progressive movement, it is the cancer that is inside both parties. It's why you don't feel like there is a choice. It's why John McCain and Barack Obama, you're going, 'You gotta be kidding me, right?'
Yeah, whoda thunk? John McCain was secretly a progressive this whole time!
And he repeated this same nonsense on Bill-O's show as a little preview to his speech at CPAC -- Beck previews CPAC speech: "There is a disease in the republic, and it is the progressive movement". If Glenn Beck is the future of the Republican Party this sort of eliminationist rhetoric should make all of us fearful for the future of our country. The clowns who drove it into the ditch are calling for civil war if they're not allowed to finish the job, led by their clown in chief, Glenn Beck.
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There's been no shortage of ugly Obama-bashing at CPAC, of course, but Gov. Tim Pawlenty yesterday hit a real low in comparing President Obama and the "big government" Democrats to Tiger Woods:
Pawlenty: Now at this very hour, or very shortly this morning, a big event is happening in the United States of America: Tigers Woods is holding his press conference. At 11 o'clock Eastern.
Now, I think we can learn a lot from that situation. Not from Tiger, but from his wife. So, she said, 'I've had enough.' She said, 'No more.' I think we should take a page out of her playbook and take a nine iron and smash the window out of big government in this country.
Now, we understand, of course, that this was just a metaphor. Nevermind that it was a ridiculously inapt one: Unlike Tiger Woods, Obama has not broken his vows; he is in fact working largely to enact the very "big government" policies on which he campaigned and for which he was duly elected. Progressives may have an argument with how well he is fulfilling those promises, but conservatives certainly do not.
But did anyone else notice that this was a particularly violent metaphor, one suggestive of people breaking out windows? It inspires images straight out of Kristallnacht.
Of course, like Glenn Beck, Pawlenty will no doubt claim that it was "just a metaphor." But as we observed in regard to Beck:
We understand metaphors and rhetoric at least as well as Beck does. The point ... [is] that this kind of rhetoric, employing violent metaphors, in fact has the effect of inspiring violent responses among its audiences.
It's grotesquely irresponsible -- which is what we have come to expect from movement conservatives anyway.
Beck then describes "The Plan," which he says is analogical to "lifeboats" on the Titanic: He says he's assembling a team of "experts" to help him shape a movement that will produce GlennBeckian electoral victories in 2010. (Obviously, that NY-23 experiment didn't turn out so hot.) These experts are being hired to work on policy areas such as the economy, the environment, national security, etc.
Beck: And what I've done, is I've found two really smart people in each category, two really -- oh, they just have all kinds of experience. And then I have coupled them with one rebel -- one radical. I hear that's popular to be a radical now.
But these radicals are not the radicals wearing the Che T-shirts. These radicals are the ones wearing the Jefferson T-shirts!
Beck had already displayed a propensity to traduce history in order to push his thesis that the progressive movement is the Enemy of America, which recently reached full flower in his pseudo-documentary based on Jonah Goldberg's pseudo-history portraying progressives as the font of all the great genocides of the past century.
Will Bunch reports that this fondness for fake history is about to extend to church-state separation issues -- and will tread into territory long hold by far-right extremists.
Bunch reports that Beck has released the first concrete details about Beck's "experts" for "The Plan":
It is an eight hour event. You and I on stage with three different experts. David Barton is going to be the first one and we're going to talk about the meaning of faith in America. All the lies that you have been told, that this isn't a nation of faith, that religion played no role. I'm you will be stunned when you learn and see the real history that is no longer taught.
As Bunch notes:
The real reason that history "is no longer taught" is because...it's bogus.
As Will explains:
Barton is the founder of a Texas-based group called the WallBuilders, a foundation devoted to proving that the roots of the United States and its Constitution are not based on the separation of church of state -- as is widely believed and widely taught -- but as country built upon a bedrock of Christianity. That is also the premise of a widely circulated book that Barton published in the 1990s called "The Myth of Separation" -- a book that was eventually re-written and issued under a different name because it was larded with bad information, some of which nevertheless became gospel on conservative talk radio. As noted in the 2006 Texas Monthly article (via Nexis):
In 1995 the historian Robert Alley attempted to trace the provenance of a quote that Rush Limbaugh had mistakenly attributed to James Madison, in which Madison purportedly called the Ten Commandments the foundation of American civilization. All roads led to David Barton, whose The Myth of Separation attributed the following quote to Madison: "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." Barton cited two sources for the quote: a 1939 book by Harold K. Lane called Liberty! Cry Liberty! and Frederick Nyneyer's 1958 book First Principles in Morality and Economics: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association. Alley couldn't find the quote anywhere in Nyneyer's book, however, and eventually concluded that Barton had pulled it from an article in a journal with the unlikely title Progressive Calvinism, which, in turn, had attributed it to something called the "1958 calendar of Spiritual Mobilization." In any case, Alley reported, the editors of Madison's papers were unable to find anything in his writings that was even remotely similar. "In addition," they added, "the idea is inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on religion and government, which he expressed time and time again in public and in private."
Barton previously appeared on Fox News' show hosted by Mike Huckabee, to promote the same nonsense. And as we noted then:
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Glenn Beck yesterday had on both of the Republican candidates in the California Senate primary, the winner of which race will be facing Barbara Boxer. And both Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina worked hard to curry Beck's favor, though it isn't hard to figure out which one won, judging by Beck's headline: "Is Chuck DeVore the next Scott Brown?"
Both interviews were essentially explorations by the candidates of Glenn Beck's favorite theme, to wit, progressives are the root of all evil in American life. This was especially the case in the interview with DeVore, who actively stoked Beck's fetish about Woodrow Wilson:
DEVORE: Well, Woodrow Wilson and people like Frank Goodnow, about 130 years ago, saw the Constitution as a roadblock to their plans for perfecting government and for basically ushering in a paradise on earth. And instead of what was set up by Madison to be a separation of powers, with the legislative, the executive and the judicial, because the Founders understood that people like power. And that you'll end up with tyranny in your country if you can't separate the powers.
...
BECK: I think the system is full of — it's riddled with a disease called progressive. If you've got cancer, no doctor says, yes start using filter tips cigarettes. They say no more cigarettes.
DEVORE: Right.
BECK: Progressives and the progressive idea are the cigarettes. So you tell me how to fix it.
Ah, nothing like a little eliminationism in the afternoon, is there?
Predictably, DeVore also revealed himself as one of those Patriot "tenthers" frequently promoted by Beck -- right-wing extremists who believe the Tenth Amendment gives states the ability to nullify federal law:
DEVORE: Well, first of all, we have to follow the Constitution. That's the very first thing that any lawmaker does when they get sworn in.
(CROSSTALK)
BECK: This audience won't, but most people say well, where aren't we following the Constitution?
DEVORE: Well, where do we start?
I think a good obvious place is Tenth Amendment. As a state lawmaker, I find my powers as a state lawmaker being short-circuited at the federal level.
As we've explained, these theories originated in the 1990s with the militia/Patriot movement.
Fiorina, in contrast, was perfectly corporate even as she tried to assure Beck that she really was a populist:
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President Obama ignored warnings not to appear at the National Prayer Breakfast today, since it was organized by fundamentalist religionists whose animus towards not just him but all progressives has been all too obvious for years. But he did anyway -- and, as Sam Stein at HuffPo reports, actually managed to deliver an important message about the critical role of civility in a democratic society.
The main point was that right-wing nutcases, and their frothing about Obama's supposed foreignness and radicalism and hatred of Christianity, make it impossible to even have a rational discussion:
Obama: Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable -- understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, 'Civility is not a sign of weakness.' Now I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. But surely, you can question my policies without questioning my faith. Or for that matter, my citizenship.
No doubt, the talkers at Fox will take this as evidence that he hates the "jes' folks" who populate the Tea Parties.
