On Glenn Beck

I discovered this yesterday. Previously, I was only a bit confused by Beck's vitriolic diatribes. primarily, I wondered whether Beck realized that—and if he did, why—he dressed like a fascist on the cover of "Arguing with Idiots." Case in point:

Still, I generally believed that if I were to sit down with Glenn Beck in a quiet setting, and neither of us were to raise our voices, I would be able to best Beck in any political debate in a manner of a few minutes.

Now, now I don't know. I think I might resort to screaming in futility and forfeit my own opinions in favor of completely justifiable murder.

Glenn Beck, you are not George Washington.

Yes, I'm sure the premise of your book was that Washington valued and tried to embody in his very human life higher ideals, which we too can choose to live by, even through hardship and personal difficulty. However, you are still not George Washington. I believe that, brought down to it, you would throw your ideals out the window to save his own life.

I would do the same thing. I'm a bleeding heart pussy. I believe life is the only sacred thing in existence, and I would give the lives of anyone willing to protect that right to protect it. I myself, am scared shitless of dying, and so would be a terrible defender. [Only partly because I compromise my integrity. The general fear would also just make me a terrible soldier in general, which is not in the best interests of any soldier nearby, or any civilians depending on me. But I digress from the main topic.]

The point I'm trying to make is that Glen Beck, an iconoclast and a pedagogue, is the very opposite of the type of men who founded this country, the parts of those men that have come into history since their deaths, that were only in the smallest sense a part of them and we have constructed as more altruistic versions of themselves. Glenn Beck is everything visceral and human and weak about the founding fathers. He is the ones who asked Washington to be their King.

That Glenn Beck would compare himself in any way to George Washington is an insult to anyone who carries a quarter in their pocket.