Now, people are more than entitled to their own opinions of how best to accomplish that democratic end. And it's a sign of health that a political and intellectual movement does not respond to a complicated set of developments with one voice.
But hysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He's marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.
Nor is it a sign of health when other American conservatives are so fearful of a popular awakening that they side with the dictator against the democrats. Rather, it's a sign of fearfulness unworthy of Americans, of short-sightedness uncharacteristic of conservatives, of excuse-making for thuggery unworthy of the American conservative tradition.
from Stand for Freedom by William Kristol, The Weekly Standard
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Bill Kristol on Glenn Beck: He's Marginalizing Himself
Glenn has cranked up the crazy to new levels this week. I sure wish he would quit calling himself a Libertarian or Conservative, since people assume real Libertarian Conservatives are remotely like Glenn. Even Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard calls Glenn out on his paranoia and conspiracy theories this week.
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I'm not American but I totally agree with this.
ReplyDeleteI always respected conservatives and some of their ideas, though a lot of times I find myself in complete opposition to them, and I've always thought Glenn Beck was not only a huge hypocrite and sensationalist, but a horrible poster boy for the American conservative movement to foreign audiences.
Keep up the good posts!