Thursday, September 16, 2010

Is Glenn Beck a Socialist? And not a Libertarian?

Phil Maymin, author of Free Your Inner Yankee, a book that I have never heard of until now, wrote a highly-critical review of Glenn Beck's philosophy. "Who is Glenn Beck, Really?" he essentially asks: a socialist. In fact, Beck is "so deep-seated in [socialism] that he doesn’t even realize it.

He has more than two riffs with Beck, but I'll quote only two important passages. Maymin has trouble agreeing with Beck. He explains here:
I had three problems with Beck’s show. The first is that he provides the right conclusions but he gets there with the wrong arguments. This is extraordinarily frustrating to watch. Suppose you like a girl, or a boy. Or you find a particular religious text magnificent. Then imagine how you would feel hearing someone praise your girl or boy, or your religious text, but for all the wrong reasons. You want to simultaneously object and agree. Yes, the object of your heart is wonderful, but not at all in that way. "Thumbelina is beautiful. She is so tall!" Huh?

And the other:
Let’s just have it out in the open, he says, and let the people decide.

And that’s where he is most wrong. Some things are absolutely not up to the people to decide. If a majority voted to execute an innocent person without due process, that is wrong. If they voted for genocide, that is wrong. Morality and majority vote are not the same thing.

But Beck thinks they are. And that’s where he reveals his statism and his socialism. Majority vote is the very basis of socialism. But true libertarians know that even 95 percent of a county can be wrong. And the important fight is to win the war in the hearts and minds of people with truth and actual engagement of the details, not sweeping things under the rug, arguing about slippery slopes, or playing clips of a handful of people.

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