The Neocons vs. Glenn Beck
Image by Andrew Aliferis via Flickr
Peter Wehner joins the ranks of neoconservatives taking shots at Fox News pundit, Glenn Beck. He’s spoken out against Beck before, calling Beck’s interest in conspiracy theories “disquieting, as is his admiration for Ron Paul and his charges of American “imperialism.” (He is now talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere.)”
I find it interesting that neocons like Wehner ignore all of the crazier things Beck says until he also starts mentioning that we should draw down our troops across the globe. ”Obama hates white people” is fine and dandy so long as it comes part and parcel with some good old fashioned hawkishness. But now that Beck is moving into the realm of non-intervention, the tables have turned, the tides shifted, new lines are being drawn in the proverbial sand.
In other words, Beck is soon to join the ranks of alternative conservative thinkers like those you might find at the excellent publication The American Conservative. He’s no Daniel Larison or Daniel McCarthy, but he’ll do as far as cable pundits go. And as I mentioned before, I think Beck is coming around. The “scales are falling” from his eyes, as it were.
So what’s Wehner’s problem this time? It appears the two-party system has come under fire from Mr. Beck, and Wehner has chosen to invoke none other than Edmund Burke to come to its defense. (Burke, of course, would do a nice ditty in his grave if he even learned the term “neoconservative” but that’s neither here nor there….)
Glenn Beck is at it again. This time he’s making the claim that America’s two political parties are essentially indistinguishable from one another, that they want to do the same things and head in the same direction. The only difference, he insists, is the rate of the journey. He then suggests, without quite saying so, that it’s time to end the two-party system in America. And for effect, Beck had his staff build two coffins, representing both the Democratic and the Republican parties. (In the world according to Beck, America is about to step into the coffin, thanks to the failures of both parties.)
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Burke understood that parties were not always right. And I happen to approach these matters as someone who considers himself to be a philosophical conservative before he is a Republican. Yet genuine conservatives understand the important role parties play in organizing people of similar beliefs to do the practical, and often the slow and imperfect, work of advancing an agenda that can eventually be translated into governing. We cannot expect perfection or utopia; what we can hope for is to make progress, a step (and sometimes two) at a time. It’s also worth pointing out that many of our greatest figures in American political history were men who proudly associated themselves with political parties — and the greatest figure in American political history, Abraham Lincoln, helped found one (the Republican party).
Beck is shaking things up and the neoconservatives don’t want to too explicitly call it his disavowal of their foreign policy positions, but that’s what it is – not his railing against the two-party system, or his conspiracy theories. If Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly gave up on their hawkish positions tomorrow, they’d be next in the firing line.
The question is whether or not it’s too late to stop Beck now that he’s gained such momentum.
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I have not been following Beck that closely, but he is right concerning the fact that both parties are serving their own interests at the expense of middle America. They have different benefactors and beneficiaries (except the common beneficiaries they call “banksters.” But, they have preying on the middle class as their modus operandi. The two major parties are skilled in distracting us with our left/right arguments while they both pillage the country. The two major parties are like watching a bad tag-team WWF match where the one in the ring beats the daylights out of the taxpayer. Then the tag-team duo of R/D’s switches places and the other one commences beating the taxpayers. We have had enough. Anyway, WTH do we need to keep troops in Germany or Korea for at this point in time anyway? Disclosure – I reluctantly voted for McCain but if I had to do it over I would have probably gone Ron Paul. Obama’s election did not surprise or disturb me. but, what Congress, the Fed, and the administration full of Harvard and Yale tax cheats has done since being in office only a couple of months has definitely gotten my attention. We are in a crisis that has been building for 40 years through the bad policies of both Republicans and Democrats. I find it hilarious and revealing how frenzied the far right and far left go when anyone starts speaking common sense like Beck. Both the right and left have destroyed the Constitution and we want it back.
So, to protect their vested interests both the far left and far right will take shots at people like Beck who truly are on a peaceful mission to restore a decent (and smaller) government to this country. People like Beck endanger the political class’s turn at the trough. People who actually are trying to change the status quo or at least bring attention to it are deconstructed, marginalized and ridiculed to keep the looting going. Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Beck all have been the recipients of this kind of disdain designed to poison their credibility. If you are a fervent supporter of either party, you have to ask yourself why the country just gets worse and the government just gets more parasitic and corrupt, no matter who wins the elections. Beck is a modern day Paul Revere, who happens to have a big microphone and a quirky sense of humor.
Well put brushwolf.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Kain,
If Mr. Beck does not mend his ways he will end up in the same place Ross Perot and Ron Paul did. It is the same place Sarah Palin is rushing off to is such a hurry.
I think you give Beck WAY too much credit, brushwolf. He’s less a modern-day Paul Revere than a slapstick-y buffoon cashing in on the Great Divide in American politics today.
I do agree with him, however, that the 2 parties are pretty indistinguishable at this point. The corporate interests, bankers, lobbyists have seen to that. And yes, 40 years of bad policies from both parties have led us to the precipice of this abyss from which we currently find ourselves dangling.
But I disagree with you – both parties are not responsible for destroying the Constitution. That dubious honor goes to the Republicans – to the Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Addingtons, Gonzalezs, et al.
“So, to protect their vested interests both the far left and far right will take shots at people like Beck who truly are on a peaceful mission to restore a decent (and smaller) government to this country…. People who actually are trying to change the status quo or at least bring attention to it are deconstructed, marginalized and ridiculed to keep the looting going.”
Yes, people who threaten the status quo often get marginalized, ridiculed, etc. No doubt. But you know who else often gets marginalized and ridiculed? The marginally ridiculous. Also, the crazy, unstable, and semi-retarded. Just because Beck’s ridiculed, doesn’t mean it’s unwarranted.
And Beck’s not on a peaceful mission at all; he may have started that way, but lately he’s hitched his wagon to this small but increasingly vocal group on the far right: the Tea Partiers, the Michelle Bachmanns, the Sarah Palins – who fancy themselves modern-day revolutionaries or patriots of some sort. The violent rhetoric from the tea baggers, the pro-lifers, the birthers, the deathers, and the anyone-but-Obama-ers….. these people aren’t trying to “peacefully restore” anything. They bring guns to the President’s speeches, call him Hitler, Mao, a Marxist, a Socialist, a Fascist…they deliberately inflame peoples’ fears and prejudices. It’s rather horrifying to watch. There’s absolutely nothing “peaceful” about Beck and his ilk.
These people will try, I believe, to form a viable 3rd party in the US (albeit a very small party. Most Americans don’t endorse or support these people). For awhile it looked like they might completely hijack what’s left of the GOP and move the party even further to the right. And that may still happen. But many of these fringers seem completely disillusioned, if not outright disgusted, with the GOP today, which is kind of strange. After all, so many of them supported Bush for 8 years, supported the wars, and didn’t say shit while Bush squandered trillions of dollars and drove us further into debt, but I digress. And no matter. Who cares if they’re 8 years too late? At least they’re angry NOW about the deficit and taxes and the Constitution, right? Mere coincidence that their anger peaked the second a Democrat got in the White House. And that he happens to be black probably has nothing to do with the level of vitriol and rancor either).
But I digress.
Now these fringers are mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore. People like Beck and Palin are leading these rag taggin’, tea bagging group of nutjobs even further to the right, right to the edge of the flat earth on which they live.
The upside of that, should it happen, is that the Republicans may actually go back to the center and become more moderate again. So instead of being the ‘Great Tent,’ they’ll just be the ‘Pup Tent,’ but at least they’ll have their sanity again (presumably). That would strengthen both the Republican and Democratic parties, and be good for the country overall (though without major changes, like campaign finance reform, too many systemic problems would remain).
In a perverse kinda way, I guess I’m rooting for this new 3rd party (let’s call them the ‘The Rag Taggin’ Tea Baggin’ Patriots of America’). Even if they succeed, their party would basically be a small group of extremists, even more isolated from most Americans than they already are. How wonderfully ironic it’d be if, in the end, the RTTBPOA, with all their sanctimonious outrage, self-righteous indignation, and mouth-foaming patriotism, ended up uniting the rest of the country rather than dividing us any further.