At His Beck and Call

A member of my family who has lately become swept up by the popular cult of the FOX-TV commentator Glenn Beck, and an advocate of his so-called “9/12 movement” sent me an article from the New York Times, in which Beck and his program were discussed. Since I recognize the appeal that Mr. Beck holds for an increasing number of supposedly disaffected, disenchanted, or discontented Americans, I thought it appropriate to post my response to the article, and to Beck’s “Nine Principles,” here, for the public to read and consider.

Dear --------,

I’ll begin by quoting from the article you sent me.

[Beck] added later: “I say on the air all time, ‘if you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.’ ”

I've listened to portions of Beck's radio show. He sounds paranoid, unfocused, stumbling from one topic to another, always breaking the emotional window when the rational door won't open.

I don't doubt that Beck is entertaining to watch, but so was that Jim Cramer fellow from Mad Money, and you can see where the wave of bombast and bluster has washed him - right onto the rocky coast of Contrition, courtesy of the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. A comedian apologizing to another comedian for the joke that went seriously wrong. And what is Beck? Why, the article says he’s a comedian.

Of course, I don't watch television, so this is all perfect nonsense to me - Jon Stewart included. Mass-market propaganda can't be expected to carry the voice of reason, as long as it is based within and beholden to the emotionally exploitative world of commercial advertising. It is the purpose of television to keep one's emotions aroused, and to disallow one from thinking in anything but an alarmist, reactive, non-circumspect fashion. There is no difference between the voice that says, "Your breath stinks! Buy more gum!" and the one that says "The Constitution is under attack! Buy more rifles!"

The more marketable people like Beck are, the more suspicious I find their message to be. I am very wary of emotional manipulation - both from the side that says nothing is wrong, and that I should relax and live normally, and from the side that says everything is wrong, and that I should panic and storm the Senate. I really can't agree with this new enthusiasm of yours, any more than with any new enthusiasm that promises or proposes rapid and radical action. Glenn Beck in a position of actual, life-and-death power would be a terrifying thing. It’s too bad that he can claim so much influence over (or at least attention from) a self-consumed public whose rage should be directed not at politics and politicians, but at the media forces that have made a three-ring circus of an inherently respectable process, and clowns of its participants. All the personal and civil liberties a government can grant will still be no good to a populace that’s too lazy and decadent to use them.

Concerning the Nine Principles and Twelve Values - I find the Principles to be somewhat objectionable from one instance to another, but not wrong as a whole; I find the Values* to be unassailable, but no different than any set of virtues professed by any civilized society or religious sect. They are not in the least bit revolutionary, and are therefore not an adequate basis for any sort of revolution.

Since I do bear objections to a several of Beck’s Principles, I will respond to them each individually:

1. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

Response: To claim that God is the center of your life, to the exclusion or diminution of all other interests, is to aspire to saintliness. It is the character of saints to seek serenity and to advocate peacefulness. Our belief in God is the best refuge and source of equilibrium we have in times of scarcity and tumult, but God is not slogan, and His name is not a war-cry. Beck must decide whether he is a preacher or a pundit, but he cannot – to any good effect – be both.

2. America Is Good.

Response: America is territory, and territory is to be adjudged good or bad according to its use. If you look at our urban sprawl, our rural blight, our ruined waterways, our city-sized landfills, and our techno-agricultural ravages, you will see that America’s territory has not been well used, and cannot therefore be called “good.” Read any American-Indian account of the European invasion, and of the native’s subjugation under the United States, and you will understand that there was nothing holy about the taking of this land. This country was founded on the corpses of slaves and innocents, not on the pious principles of mythological Virginian demigods.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

Response: This is a very noble principle, and everyone will be happier who follows it faithfully.

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.

Response: My spouse and I (presuming I have a spouse) are the ultimate authority of what? Of whom? This principle cannot be deemed usable until it has been properly explicated. It seems to be an anachronism of the frontier days of Western expansion.

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

Response: If “my spouse and I are the ultimate authority,” as the above principle states, then this principle is automatically nullified. What is the government for, if it is not for the execution of justice? What constitutes a crime, and what is the proper penalty for what kind of transgression? And who, according to Beck, decides? Is it God? The Founding Fathers? My hypothetical spouse and I? Who?

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

Response: Natural equality was Locke’s idea, and Jefferson derived his inspiration for the Declaration of Independence from the philosophy of Locke. I do not think that this proposition is necessarily untrue, only that its provenance must be correctly established for it to be understood. We may not be guaranteed the same standard of living, but we should all have what we need to lead healthy, civilized existences, and not be made to suffer from the avarice and excess of our neighbor – regardless of how industrious (or ruthless) our neighbor has been.

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

Response: A rich person who lets a poor person starve is a murderer. It is the most basic and inextricable function of the government to prevent crime, reform the criminal, and provide food and shelter to all of its people, wealthy and poor alike. These syllogisms are indivisible. The rich must accept that the duty to help the poor has naturally devolved upon them, and that the government will hold them to task for their dereliction. In our industrial society, it is the poor who make things, and the rich who profit from them, by selling them back to the poor at prices their wages won’t sustain. Remember what Jesus said about the birds of the field and the lilies of the valley? If God has not been miserly with His creations, how are we to regard selfishness as sacred?

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.

Response: This does not explain where free speech ends and treason begins. To disagree with authority is a mere exercise of intellectual independence, but to act in direct opposition to authority – that is, civil authority – is sedition. I do not believe that a government that causes or allows its population to suffer needlessly is worthy of being defended or obeyed, since the betrayal has already begun with the government itself. In the case of a government that is essentially good, but unavoidably imperfect, however, it is the citizen’s duty to live under it peacefully, and to advocate improvement through legal and rational means. Glenn Beck has proved himself irrational already; it would take greater courage than he possesses to actually become a revolutionary, or for that matter, a traitor.

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Response: In truth, the process is reciprocal. We give the government authority over us, with the knowledge that the extent of that authority – and the time in which it has to dispose of it – is limited. In an ideal socialist state, we would all work for the government, and the government would collect our labors and redistribute them for the mutual benefit of all. In a democracy, such as we profess to have, the politician works for himself by claiming to represent his constituency, while his constituents work for themselves, by bribing him with support, and obliging him to carry their opinions. Politicians lie, beg, and swindle their way into office, and yet we are astonished when they continue to be liars, beggars, and swindlers from behind the desks we won for them. In the case of the present crisis, however, the government is the only power capable of comprehending the full breadth and complexity of the matter, and it is arrogant for any citizen to claim that he has a better grasp of the problem and its solutions than the government does. It is the duty of government at this time to consolidate our efforts and to focus them to a degree that we, as disparate private citizens, cannot see to do. We must trust that the government will not, in the meantime, allow any of us to starve – the way that Glenn Beck seems ready to allow his neighbors to starve, according to his estimation of their worthiness for life.

Sincerely,
-Damien
(Chillingworth)

*Note: Beck’s “Twelve Values” are, respectively, Reverence, Honesty, Hope, Thrift, Humility, Charity, Sincerity, Moderation, Hard Work, Courage, Personal Responsibility, and Gratitude. These are all blameless virtues, to be sure, but the fact that they are proposed by the same man who advocates the “Nine Principles” above speaks more to me of hypocrisy than of infantile idealism.