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Glenn Beck, how far will he go?
I've been listening to Glenn Beck's radio show off and on for a few years. I've been watching him gradually sliding ever farther down the philisophical slope toward truth. He's been very good at batting at the branches of the tree of evil. Pointing out this villian and that. He's also been chopping at the major branches, for instance seeing the error of WWI leading to WWII etc. Now he's even hacking at the trunk, talking about restoring focus to the individual, using livestock analogys to discuss rule, saying man can rule himself, and talking about the barriers to freedom being within our own mind. Today after a year of telling everyone about God, he even said not to let any man tell you anything about God that God does not tell you himself. Frankly it's excruciating to watch. He's so close to the root, but cannot quite let go of positions and opinions that his philosophical beliefs have gone beyond. He's still stuck on "save the republic". It's like come on dude, just let go, cut the cord already......we will catch you!!!!
Does anybody think there's a chance?
__________________
"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."
Frank Zappa
I've been listening to Glenn Beck's radio show off and on for a few years. I've been watching him gradually sliding ever farther down the philisophical slope toward truth. He's been very good at batting at the branches of the tree of evil. Pointing out this villian and that. He's also been chopping at the major branches, for instance seeing the error of WWI leading to WWII etc. Now he's even hacking at the trunk, talking about restoring focus to the individual, using livestock analogys to discuss rule, saying man can rule himself, and talking about the barriers to freedom being within our own mind. Today after a year of telling everyone about God, he even said not to let any man tell you anything about God that God does not tell you himself. Frankly it's excruciating to watch. He's so close to the root, but cannot quite let go of positions and opinions that his philosophical beliefs have gone beyond. He's still stuck on "save the republic". It's like come on dude, just let go, cut the cord already......we will catch you!!!!
Does anybody think there's a chance?
To be frank, no.
He's a Fox News darling. I think a statist POV is crucial to this guys public reputation and I believe that means more to him than total liberty.
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Jackie Fiest
Yes he cannot abandon the state and stay popular. He would be carried out of the studio in a straight jacket. But I'm thinking he could be just flaky enough to sack his own career for the sake of principle at some point. He's already doing and saying some things that are not conducive to popularity among conservative types. I don't think he has objectively contemplated complete liberty, and rejected it to preserve his career. I think he simply does not understand it yet.
I can see a huge problem. Again, this dogmatic/cultural belief that people are inherently evil is diabolical. Once this seed is planted you only need somebody to cut you off in traffic later that day for mental confirmation. Then every time somebody pisses you off, every story of violence in the paper, every condensed tale of human debris that the media works so hard to concentrate down and feed to your living room serves to perpetuate and confirm this in your mind a million times. People are evil. All that is served up on the news is the worst of the worst. After all, the media doesn't do all that many stories about how a guy helped out his neighbor and otherwise minded his own business and had a productive day today. They find the one guy in state that raped an old lady and report that. Since most people don't generally have much contact with horrible personal evil in our own lives (because it is relatively rare) we become convinced that we live in this little bubble of goodness apart from the horrible world of depravity. It follows that some force must be holding all the dogs at bay to maintain this little world for us, holding off the hoard of killers and dirtbags waiting to slit our throats and eat our children. It must be the state. This is confirmed by stories of how the state took out Hitler, how the state brought freedom and prosperity to post war Japan, how the state ended the depression, about how the state brought freedom to the people of Iraq, about how the state brought a killer to justice and brought a new factory to town. No wonder people cling to this fantasy state even as it becomes their tyrant and abuser. No wonder they accept that theft is necessary and deserved.
In the case of Glenn Beck he sees religion as a suitable substitute for the state in keeping everyone in line. In other words, if people get God to punish them, they no longer need the state to do it, and therefore, can "rule themselves". He says this is why the state is becoming the enemy of religion. The must get rid of God so they can be the rulers instead. The problem is that religious rule will be rule not of the self and the self's independent perception of what God wants, but of a dogma based on the teachings and interpretations of men, subject to the constant reinterpretation of men, and typically disconnected from reason and the goal of serving human happiness. This is why the aristocrats of enlightenment tried to cut the cord between the word and the guns.
Glenn Beck will not be able to let go of the state as he sees it as a tool of the insertion of religious self-rule into people's lives. The tool of the insertion of his rule, and the rule of 3000 year old monks who hated gay people and mixed fiber cloth. This is what people like David Barton and my friends in the tea party want. They believe religious people are rendered less evil, can rule themselves, and therefore the active endorsement and encouragement of religion through the state can provide freedom.
Yesterday he discussed how happenings in the middle east are described in the old testament. That implies that an understanding that how to "deal with" that situation in accordance with God's will shall best be based on the scriptures. You can't leave such things to bad ungodly people who won't even follow and use what the scriptures say, so you've got to have a God fearing state to forceably carry out protection of people from these events using the "correct" information and motivations.
He will never be able to let go.