October 7, 2010--From the Bookshelf of Glenn Beck
If you listen to Glenn Beck for more than five minutes you might easily wonder if he does any reading at all since so much of what he rants about is made up. His take on American history, for example, is almost always without foundation in fact. Then again, considering this, maybe he reads a lot of fiction.
So you may be surprised to learn that he and his minions actually do read books. As the New York Times recently reported, he and other Tea Partiers have discovered some obscure texts from the past that have become their canon. (Article linked below.)
Until hearing about this I thought their reading went back only as far as Ayn Rand, whose Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged was their secular bible. I read them when I was about 20 and admit they did give me a cheap thrill. What, with the hyper-emphasis on self reliance and the claim that life was all about self-assertion, I was taken in. Hers was just the sort of message I was susceptible to at that impressionable age when I was thinking about how to chart the course of my adult life.
But by the time I became that adult her message began to wear thin. Like Margaret Thatcher asserted a couple of decades ago, Rand rejected the idea that society exists. Literally.
Instead, Rand wrote in muscular prose and Thatcher believed, it is all about the individual and thus there is that nasty implication--since we are all on our own if one of our fellow citizens runs into trouble (loses a job, for example, or gets sick) they are on their own.
There should be no expectation, much less a requirement, that any of us should lend them a hand. Those who falter or are affected by bad luck got what they deserved and thus it is up to them to figure out what to do. And if they can't, too bad.
These Randians and pseudo-libertarians reject the idea of social virtue, where we recognize that our lives are interdependent and behave accordingly. Social Darwinism some call this cult of the individual. People by nature participate in a fierce and bloody struggle in which only the fittest survive. Read should survive.
Ironically this social evolutionary theory is devoutly believed in by those who deny the validity of biological evolutionary theory.
This is how Rand and her acolytes see the world. And acolytes they truly are--believers not thinkers.
Now I'm hearing that Ayn Rand is not the only author these folks read.
A favorite is Frédéric Bastiat who in 1850 wrote The Law in which he argued that taxing people to pay for schools and roads was government-sanctioned theft. And Friedrich Hayek who in 1944, in his Road to Serfdom (a Glenn Beck favorite) wrote that a government that in any way intervenes in the economy will in every instance intervene in all aspects of people's lives.
Self-published author Cleon Skousen's The 5000 Year Leap is another Tea Party best seller. In it, without any references to actual historical texts and ignoring the First Amendment, this ardent supporter of the John Birch Society, claims that the Founding Fathers had not intended any separation of church and state and that if they were still around would consider taxing Americans to provide for the welfare of others to be "a sin."
This in spite of that very First Amendment to the Constitution that they purport to revere which states--"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." But I guess Skousen and his followers never got past the Preamble.
Half-learning our history gets these folks to some funky conclusions about American law and life. From opposition to all taxes to opposition to all forms of public education to opposition to Social Security and unemployment insurance to opposition to any notion of a minimum wage.
A lot of these radical views are being muted at the moment by candidates such as Rand Paul in Kentucky who realize that spouting them in public, as opposed to closed Tea Party rallies, may hurt them in a general election where people who actually know their history might be inclined to reject them as, well, Un-American.
So you may be surprised to learn that he and his minions actually do read books. As the New York Times recently reported, he and other Tea Partiers have discovered some obscure texts from the past that have become their canon. (Article linked below.)
Until hearing about this I thought their reading went back only as far as Ayn Rand, whose Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged was their secular bible. I read them when I was about 20 and admit they did give me a cheap thrill. What, with the hyper-emphasis on self reliance and the claim that life was all about self-assertion, I was taken in. Hers was just the sort of message I was susceptible to at that impressionable age when I was thinking about how to chart the course of my adult life.
But by the time I became that adult her message began to wear thin. Like Margaret Thatcher asserted a couple of decades ago, Rand rejected the idea that society exists. Literally.
Instead, Rand wrote in muscular prose and Thatcher believed, it is all about the individual and thus there is that nasty implication--since we are all on our own if one of our fellow citizens runs into trouble (loses a job, for example, or gets sick) they are on their own.
There should be no expectation, much less a requirement, that any of us should lend them a hand. Those who falter or are affected by bad luck got what they deserved and thus it is up to them to figure out what to do. And if they can't, too bad.
These Randians and pseudo-libertarians reject the idea of social virtue, where we recognize that our lives are interdependent and behave accordingly. Social Darwinism some call this cult of the individual. People by nature participate in a fierce and bloody struggle in which only the fittest survive. Read should survive.
Ironically this social evolutionary theory is devoutly believed in by those who deny the validity of biological evolutionary theory.
This is how Rand and her acolytes see the world. And acolytes they truly are--believers not thinkers.
Now I'm hearing that Ayn Rand is not the only author these folks read.
A favorite is Frédéric Bastiat who in 1850 wrote The Law in which he argued that taxing people to pay for schools and roads was government-sanctioned theft. And Friedrich Hayek who in 1944, in his Road to Serfdom (a Glenn Beck favorite) wrote that a government that in any way intervenes in the economy will in every instance intervene in all aspects of people's lives.
Self-published author Cleon Skousen's The 5000 Year Leap is another Tea Party best seller. In it, without any references to actual historical texts and ignoring the First Amendment, this ardent supporter of the John Birch Society, claims that the Founding Fathers had not intended any separation of church and state and that if they were still around would consider taxing Americans to provide for the welfare of others to be "a sin."
This in spite of that very First Amendment to the Constitution that they purport to revere which states--"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." But I guess Skousen and his followers never got past the Preamble.
Half-learning our history gets these folks to some funky conclusions about American law and life. From opposition to all taxes to opposition to all forms of public education to opposition to Social Security and unemployment insurance to opposition to any notion of a minimum wage.
A lot of these radical views are being muted at the moment by candidates such as Rand Paul in Kentucky who realize that spouting them in public, as opposed to closed Tea Party rallies, may hurt them in a general election where people who actually know their history might be inclined to reject them as, well, Un-American.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:07 AM
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