“A deeply informed and experienced radio host, Mark Levin, has broken out in the radio world with ratings that make Glenn Beck’s real numbers look like the third tier radio host he actually is. Levin also wrote a significant New York Times bestseller, moving well over a million copies by now. But there was no Time cover, no Newsweek splash, no Katie Couric interview for that. Have you ever paused long enough to ask yourself why?
[T]he elitist media gets the joke. They are not putting him up there because they find him an effective, articulate spokesman for the right. They find him an oddity, something they can pin prick and laugh at. And consciously or not, they also know he has the potential to do tremendous damage to the right while having accomplished very little if anything much at all to help it himself.
And frankly, getting off one’s duff and getting involved in local or state party politics or actively joining up with the tea party movement is the only thing that’s going to help take back America and set the Republican Party right for the center-right.”—Dan Riehl
While I disagree with some of Riehl’s “gatekeeper” nonsense, he does make a few points that are worth noting.
I.M. Kane
I Come Not to Praise Glenn Beck, But to Bury Him
By Dan Riehl
When originally endeavoring to write an approximately 800-word opinion piece on Glenn Beck, I hadn’t taken into account what a truly difficult task it would be. I’ve no desire to alienate some of my many friends on the right currently embracing Beck. But I do have this terrible habit of usually speaking my mind. Glenn Beck deserves credit for what he is doing to hurt Obama — there is no question about that. But in thinking about the man overall as a media figure today, one allegedly aligned with the right, I also have serious concerns. I tried to do my best to address the topic fairly, and I regret that so complex a topic took me almost 1,800 words.
Given the down feeling across the right after last year’s elections, it’s almost exciting to watch Glenn Beck inject a new vitality into the nation’s political discourse. Nearly every one of Beck’s shows packs the respect, depth, sincerity, and intelligence of a good joke at a funeral parlor into one uproarious hour after another. I don’t know how anyone can keep from snickering … at least a little bit. So, what’s the harm in a good joke?
The harm as I see it is that so many seem to be taking the joke seriously. But can you blame them? No, probably not. The media culture of today has done everything in its power to prevent the right from seeing a serious, effective leadership emerge on the national stage. One need only look back to the recent — in fact, ongoing — mistreatment of Sarah Palin to demonstrate that. A deeply informed and experienced radio host, Mark Levin, has broken out in the radio world with ratings that make Glenn Beck’s real numbers look like the third tier radio host he actually is. Levin also wrote a significant New York Times bestseller, moving well over a million copies by now. But there was no Time cover, no Newsweek splash, no Katie Couric interview for that. Have you ever paused long enough to ask yourself why?
Full disclosure — yes, Mark Levin has become something of a dear and trusted friend. But please don’t mistake this as carping or defense on his behalf. Mark is the last person I know who needs or wants to be defended by someone else. My opinions in this matter have nothing to do with Levin and everything to do with the future of the right and the desperate need we have of winning a large number of state and district elections in 2010. And I am not suggesting that Glenn Beck should somehow shut up, go away, or stop pointing a finger at this out-of-control leftist White House whenever he can. Let’s be clear about that. What I am suggesting is that at least some relatively small but vocal amount of people are misunderstanding why Beck is getting the media exposure that he is.
In short, the elitist media gets the joke. They are not putting him up there because they find him an effective, articulate spokesman for the right. They find him an oddity, something they can pin prick and laugh at. And consciously or not, they also know he has the potential to do tremendous damage to the right while having accomplished very little if anything much at all to help it himself. And that’s a fact. He was given a non-prominent microphone and television show in a mostly uncompetitive time slot, replacing a very decent but relatively uncompelling and beyond-his-prime John Gibson. And piggybacking on the efforts of others, Beck has displayed tremendous marketing ability, or his handlers have, in making the absolute best use of it while also doing damage to a politically dangerous White House. He deserves praise and full credit for that.
However, we should not confuse what it is and what it is not, nor lose sight of the extremely dangerous time bombs he has planted for the right as he’s gone so thoughtlessly and carelessly on his way in doing it. First some facts as to what Beck has and has not actually done in terms of damaging the Obama administration. From the 9/12 tea party march, to Van Jones, the NEA scandal, and ACORN, none of these were the genuine work of Glenn Beck. He did no heavy lifting on any of those stories other than ginning up noise around them on his show, often milking them for days while, to genuine observers, all the facts were out there for anyone of a mind to find them out. That isn’t an insult. He has a television presence and it’s good that he’s currently using it to capitalize on stories that help the right and undermine Obama. I’m not begrudging him that.
But his attempt to co-opt the tea party movement with that silly 9/12 Project nonsense that never actually caught on was the most ham-fisted and perhaps only insulting one of them all. Nine principles and 12 values? Can anyone even name them today? They were supposed to be what it was all about once. Oh well, at least one of his marketing schemes hasn’t tracked, so we do know he’s human after all. The D.C. tea party protest was always planned to come off. All Beck did was come up with a scheme to weave into it, trying to make it his, and it failed. I know because I was there. Aside from whatever more rabid fans he may have encircled himself with for his broadcast that day, nothing about 9/12 was about Glenn Beck. The movement preceded him, just as it preceded Obama, having started under Bush. And frankly, getting off one’s duff and getting involved in local or state party politics or actively joining up with the tea party movement is the only thing that’s going to help take back America and set the Republican Party right for the center-right. In that sense, Beck is a distraction, if nothing else. But he is also something far worse. He’s a genuine danger to us and we need to sort that out. Without taking credit away from Beck for talking it up as he did, along with many, many others, the notion that 9/12 was much about Beck is a joke. The many pushing it were simply more generous in crediting the people actually involved — the little people, patriotic Americans across the country like you and me who are driving it. They stand in stark contrast to Beck, who seems to ultimately and always be about himself. As for the real meat behind the various other scandals mentioned, it was either Breitbart or blogger Gateway Pundit who did the real work on those. Beck’s great contribution was again, like others, to broadcast them. That’s a good thing. He deserves credit for that, though also unfortunately he seems so willing to make them his own. I guess that’s what so-called stars, or wannabe famous people, do.
But what else has he done? This represents my only serious concerns involving Beck. Otherwise, I doubt I’d be much interested in him at all. He’s called Barack Obama a racist, for one. I’m appalled by my friends on the right who seem so willing to pass that remark off as insignificant — almost pretending it was never said. It was outrageous, undeserved, and represents nothing but the very kind of racist cudgel the left has been falsely charging the right with being for years. Maybe Beck is one, otherwise he could never conceive of making such a remark — and so publicly at that.
I thought Barack Obama wasn’t even “really” black to many of his critics? I thought the good friend he was “pal-ing around with,” domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, was white? In fact, Obama has probably broken bread with more white people than black over the years. And forget the nuance, the rationalization around what it is he really meant or was trying to say. That doesn’t and won’t matter when the left and the media pick it back up and turn it on you, not just Glenn Beck, to call you intolerant and racist, just as they have wrongly been doing for years.
So, Beck-heads, be advised. If nothing else, don’t come crying to me about how a biased media mistreats you and calls you names you don’t deserve to be called when they tire of the right’s alleged fair-haired boy and decide to use his recklessness and lack of thought against you. And they will do it not just to you, but the entire conservative movement because he was prominently embraced and not denounced. Well, not me. And I want to be very clear and on record here. The comment was uncalled for.
And what about those internment camps? That’s a good one. When the story first broke I looked into it. It took all of an hour to read the text of the actual bill and see there was nothing to it at all. Yet somehow it took Beck, all the while stirring up his would-be masses, a month to figure it out. Really? With his supposedly dogged researchers and researching skills? Please, give me a break. So there again Beck has planted the very seed that, just as Obama’s past with ACORN is currently doing to him, is going to come back and hurt the right to a significant degree. We’ll be denounced en masse as a bunch of wild-eyed conspiracy freaks and racists. And thanks to any broad embrace of Glenn Beck and the lowest common denominator of showmanship that he represents, this time you’ll deserve it.
I understand the center-right’s frustration. For some time the Republican Party has failed us, though it does now seem to be getting on track based upon my observations here in Washington, D.C. I know how frustrating it was to watch the unfair destruction of Sarah Palin. In that sense, dare I say, I feel your pain. And I share the desperation of wanting to find someone that the media allows to stand up, to not be maligned while honestly and fairly speaking to our issues and representing our various just causes such as they are. But I refuse to accept just anyone in that role because it’s too important to me.
And I especially refuse to accept someone so reckless, uninformed, unthinking, and possibly even unserious with a very real potential to do the right more harm than good in the end.
THE MANAGERS OF AMERICA’S DECLINE
Posted in Latest Commentary, tagged 527 groups, ACORN, ACT, America's Decline, America's Founders, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Americans Coming Together, Americans Coming Together (ACT), amnesty bill, Andrew Brietbart, Associate Justice of U.S. Supreme Court, Astroturf, Benjamin Franklin's snake, big government, bigots, Boston Tea Party, Bread and Circuses administration, Brother O, campaign finance reform, community advisory boards, creed of ignorance, danger of disunity, Democrat Party, Democrat rule, Democratic Party George Soros’s property, dictatorial one-party rule, Don’t Tread on Me, Dubai Ports, Dubai Ports deal, eliminate the secret ballot, era of bipartisanship, fiscal responsibility, Founders, founding Spirit of America, free enterprise, free markets, Friedrich Hayek, Gadsden flag, George Soros, George W. Bush, gospel of envy, Greek mythology, Green, Harriet Myers, health care reform bill, Heracles, homophobes, Hydra, illegal immigrants, individual liberty, Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Keynesian, Lernaean, Libertarian, limited government, McCain-Kennedy Immigration Reform Bill, Midterm election, misinformation, MoveOn.org, Nazi Party, Net neutrality regulations, November Midterm election, ObamaCare, oligarchy, one immortal head, one shot, one-party rule, overarching socialism, personal freedom, philosophy of failure, Phoenix Group, progressive enemy, progressive oligarchy, progressive socialist governance, racists, radio talk-show host, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, rule of law, ruling oligarchy, sanctity of the rule of law, secret ballot, shadow government, Shadow Party, shouting racial invectives, slaves, Socialism, socialist agenda, socialist dictatorship, socialist state, Sonia Sotomayor, Spirit of America, spitting on congressmen, Stimulus Bill, Supreme Court, Supreme Court nominee, survey sampling, Tea Party, Tea Party movement, tea party patriots, teacher unions, the original intent of the Constitution, think tanks, third parties, two-party system, tyranny, U.S. Supreme Court, union elections, Vaclav Havel, Velvet Revolution, Vice President Joe Biden, Winston Churchill on April 26, 2010| 3 Comments »
Talk radio personality Jim Quinn of "The War Room with Quinn and Rose" addresses the faithful at the Indiana Armstrong Patriots tea party rally in Kittanning, Pennsylvania.
The following speech was delivered at an Indiana Armstrong Patriots Tea Party Rally at the John P. Murtha Amphitheater in Kittanning, Pennsylvania April 24, 2010.
The Managers of America’s Decline
By Jerry A. Kane
I’m here today to elaborate on the Democrat Party’s management of America’s decline, and to tell you that the fate of this nation is in your hands because the founding Spirit of America has awakened you to resist the tyranny at her doorstep.
This is why the Tea Party movement identifies with America’s first revolt against tyranny, the Boston Tea Party, and why many in the movement dress in colonial garb and brandish the country’s founding symbols such as the “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flag and Benjamin Franklin’s snake cut into eight parts depicting the danger of disunity.
As Franklin’s drawing was a call for patriots to unite against the tyranny of the British monarchy, to those same ends I call upon the tea party patriots today to set aside political differences and unite against the tyranny of the progressive oligarchy.
America’s Founders had the wisdom to recognize their common enemy, to put aside their political differences, and to hang together to keep from hanging separately. Today, however, too many tea party patriots don’t recognize the progressive enemy and far too many are blinded by their pet political issues to see the overarching socialism that is destroying this country.
For the many who have not yet figured it out, the “change” that Brother O promised during his campaign involves the dissolution of the Republic and the imposition of a socialist state, and from the outset of his coronation in January 2009, his Bread and Circuses administration and the Democrat Party have been working feverishly to that end.
I’ve heard radio talk show hosts and so-called conservative leaders who identify with the Tea Party movement blame corrupt politicians and America’s two-party system for her demise, but if truth be told, the blame lies squarely at the feet of the Democrat Party and the piper who calls the tune, George Soros—the party’s billionaire benefactor and creator of the Shadow Party, which is a nationwide network of more than 60 unions, 527 groups, and think tanks designed to ensure Democrat dominance in the electoral process and to achieve one-party rule in the United States.
The background of the world’s thirty-eighth richest man is replete with effecting political “change.” He helped finance the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” that brought Vaclav Havel (Vass lass Have vule) to power in the Czech Republic. He also helped to engineer coups in Slovakia, Croatia, Georgia, and Yugoslavia.
Before effecting political change in a country, Soros first establishes a shadow government, which is a fully formed government-in-exile, ready to assume power at the opportune moment. The Shadow Party control center that he created inside the Democrat Party is patterned after the shadow governments that he created in other countries before instigating a coup.
To bring change to America’s political system, Soros had to limit the ability of the political parties to raise money. So in 2002, he engineered campaign finance reform complete with a loophole for private 527 organizations such as MoveOn.org that could collect soft money.
Once the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws were established, Soros assembled a coalition of political strategists, activists, and major Democrat donors at his Southampton beach house in Long Island, New York, in 2003, and there he built the Shadow Party to circumvent those very laws that he engineered.
To test the political waters, Soros dumped more than $300 million in Democrat coffers, and created Americans Coming Together or (ACT), a group made up of big government and teacher unions to coordinate media ads and carry out the ground war. ACT gathered 100,000 campaign workers and collected large amounts of money to knock on doors and get people to the polls.
When his candidate John Kerry lost the presidency in 2004, Soros assessed what went wrong then assembled 70 plutocrats in Scottsdale, Arizona, to form the Phoenix Group in the spring of 2005, and there he laid out a five-year plan to create a network of think tanks, media outlets, and training centers to promote his progressive-socialist-Marxist politics.
The Shadow Party is the center of power of the Democrat Party; certainly no Democrat can be elected without tapping into its constellation of organizations. Actually, the Shadow Party is the Democrat Party. It works behind the scenes pushing a radical socialist agenda and few Democratic voters know it even exists.
In December 2004, the Executive Director for MoveOn.org declared the Democratic Party George Soros’s property: “Now it’s our Party. We bought it, we own it …” And in 2006, Joe Lieberman discovered the accuracy of that statement when the three-term incumbent U.S. senator and former vice presidential nominee of the Democrat Party was ousted from the Party by an unknown in the Democratic primaries.
Soros views America’s free enterprise system as the greatest obstacle to world justice and stability, so he’s on an ideological mission. He’s assembled a coalition of billionaires, giant unions, street radicals, and seasoned political operatives, never before seen in American politics, to subordinate America’s interests to global interests; her sovereignty to global government; her law to global courts; her wealth to global taxation; and her productivity to global redistribution schemes.
For Soros to realize his mission, the Democrat Party will need to remain in power through the November Midterm election. Last September Vice President Joe Biden said that if the Republicans take back control of the House, it’s “the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do,” in other words, doomsday for their socialist agenda.
He went on to say that the November election is the “one shot” Republicans have at stopping the Democrat agenda, and if they don’t “the dam will break and a new era of bipartisanship will begin.” Biden’s “era of bipartisanship” will end America’s experiment in representative democracy and usher in the dawn of a new age of progressive socialist governance and dictatorial one-party rule.
In 1932, the German people were afforded a rare opportunity to vote the Nazi Party from power. They had the chance to save their republic from a socialist dictatorship but chose instead to remain divided and cling to their petty political differences. Because the majority of the German people wouldn’t unite to defeat their greater enemy, the Nazis stayed in power with 42 percent support and every German shared in the guilt of Hitlerism.
Unlike the German majority in ’32, we have the luxury of hindsight. We know that a government that’s big enough to supply our every need is also big enough to take away everything that we have. Friedrich Hayek and Ronald Reagan warned us that big government destroys individual liberty, personal freedom, free enterprise, and the rule of law. And socialism is big government squared; it is a profoundly un-American system that provides a ruling oligarchy with the power to control all aspects of human life from cradle to grave.
Winston Churchill said: “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Simply put, socialism, also known as progressivism or leftism or statism, is America’s natural enemy.
The socialist beast that fully controls two of the three branches of America’s government is analogous to the nine-headed Lernaean (ler knee ian) Hydra in Greek mythology. As the story goes, each time Heracles would destroy one of the monster’s heads, two more would spring up in its place. He discovered that the only way to kill the beast was to find and sever its one immortal head.
Heracles’ discovery regarding the vulnerability of the Hydra also applies to the socialist monster governing America. As Andrew Brietbart’s investigative reporters proved by exposing the corruption at ACORN, it is possible to take down and neutralize the effects of a Soros-funded organization. However, like the heads of the Hydra, when one is destroyed more will emerge to take its place, and in the case of ACORN it will be more groups bearing different names and acronyms.
Metaphorically speaking, the only way to destroy America’s governing monster is to sever its immortal head, and the Democrat Party is that immortal head. And whether we like it or not, the Republican Party is the only weapon in our arsenal that can remove the socialist monster from power. Supporting Libertarian, Green, or even lesser third parties will only diminish the power of the electorate and ensure Democrat rule and a socialist dictatorship.
Those who claim there’s not a dimes worth of difference between the two parties either aren’t paying attention, or they have some other agenda for parroting such misinformation. Take for instance the charge that the president and the Congress won’t listen to the will of the people and apply it to the previous administration:
What happened when George W. Bush and the Republicans tried to push through the Dubai Ports deal? The people rose up in anger, flooded the White House and the Congress with letters, phone calls, faxes, and e-mails, and Bush withdrew deal.
What happened when Bush and the Republicans tried to push through the controversial Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Myers? Again, the people rose up in anger, flooded the White House and the Congress with letters etc, Bush withdrew the nomination.
And what happened when Bush and the Republicans tried to push through the McCain-Kennedy Immigration Reform Bill? Once again, the people rose up in anger flooded the White House and the Congress with letters etc, and the amnesty bill was abandoned.
Now apply the same charge to the current Bread and Circuses administration:
What happened when Brother O and the Democrats tried to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, that massive Keynesian waste product commonly referred to as the Stimulus Bill? The people rose up in anger, flooded the White House and the Congress with letters, phone calls, faxes, and e-mails, only this time Congress passed the bill and Brother O signed it into law.
What happened when Brother O and the Democrats tried to push through controversial Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor? Again, the people rose up in anger, flooded the White House and the Congress with letters etc, but this time the nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate and she’s an Associate Justice of U.S. Supreme Court.
And what happened when Brother O and the Democrats tried to push through the health care reform bill, known as ObamaCare? Once again, the people rose up in anger, flooded the White House and the Congress with letters etc, only this time Congress passed the bill and Brother O signed it into law.
Still think the parties are the same? Answer these questions:
Which political party has tried to discredit the tea parties?
Which political party has been slandering tea party activists?
Which political party has called tea party protesters Astroturf and has falsely accused them in the national media of shouting racial invectives and of spitting on congressmen?
And which political party stereotypes tea party activists as racists, homophobes, and bigots?
Now if memory serves me well, didn’t the Congressman, for whom this amphitheater is named, stereotype his very own constituents as racist rednecks over the national media in 2008?
What’s more, I can name several libertarian and conservative Republicans who champion those very principles the tea party movement supports: free markets, fiscal responsibility, limited government, the original intent of the Constitution, and the sanctity of the rule of law, but I can’t name even one congressional Democrat who values those principles. Can you?
Denial is not just a river in Africa, it’s also counter-productive. If Republicans don’t take back control of the House and Senate in the Midterm Election, Soros’ Democrat Party has plans to fix subsequent elections to permanently control America’s democratic process:
First, they will grant amnesty to illegal immigrants and speed up their citizenship status to add millions of new Democrat voters.
Next, they will use survey sampling instead of an actual head count for the census to increase the population figures for northeastern cities so their states will get more congressmen and more electoral votes to offset the population shift of the sunbelt states.
Then they will eliminate the secret ballot in union elections to add more unions, which means more union members to vote Democrat.
Finally, they will silence dissent over the Internet through Net neutrality regulations and over talk radio by establishing community advisory boards consisting of local political activists who will monitor radio programming for the FCC and rate whether the content meets community needs. The FCC will levy hefty fines and revoke licenses for low ratings.
Under the guise of progress and compassion, socialism concentrates all the wealth in the hands of an oligarchy in the name of social justice; it reduces people to misery in the name of sharing resources and to ignorance in the name of science; it creates inequality in the name of equality and constructs a network of concentration camps in the defense of liberty.
With disaster looming, are you going to wait until freedom is gone before you understand what freedom means? Are you going to wait until you have no future before you discover the purpose of life? It’s time to decide whether you will be free men or slaves.
Read Full Post »