[nathanbedford]

I had never heard of Glenn back until after the election yet he is closest to my views of any radio talk jock today. More than any other radio personality, even including Dennis Prager, Beck thinks thematically rather than episodically, that is, reacting to events. He clearly sees the threat to the nation and pulls together the threads to explain the motivation and methods of the Obama administration. He explores in depth, for example, the relationship between Obama and Acorn and the influence of George Soros and the implications for American liberty and does so in a way that makes the whole pattern plain and understandable.

For those of us who have been calling Obama a Manchurian Marxist since before the election, all of this is very gratifying. That is not to say that Limbaugh is not brilliant at is skewering Obama. Hannity is a great chronicaler of the sins of the administration. Levin also operates thematically and is implacable devoted to liberty and reacts with repugnance to stateism, but he vitiates his credibility with pointless and excessive humiliation of his callers.

On first impression one would not detect that Glenn Beck has a extremely facile mind. He is probably as bright as Levin and carries a great deal of charisma and an unassuming boy next-door kind of likability. In my judgment, Glenn Beck's greatest liability is what I detect to be a tendency towards bipolar excess. A recovering alcoholic, he might be what they describe as on a "dry drunk." This has nothing whatever to do with the quality of this analysis but it does have to do with his emotional stability. I hope and trust that he can `maintain a true course because he represents a very valuable voice for conservatism/libertarianism.

More, he puts together the whole package and illustrates the very real multifaceted threat to our liberties presented by the Manchurian Marxist.

I do take issue with Beck on his persistent and unnecessary lashing out against Republicans when he equates them with Democrats. No one should ask me to take a back seat in the game of criticizing the Republicans including George Bush. I have my posts which I can produce showing that I predicted the defeat in 2006 because the Republicans departed from conservative values. I took a lot of flack for predicting the defeats in 2006 and 2008. For a long time my favorite slap at the Republicans was, "the only thing we learned from the election of 2008 is that we have learned nothing from the election of 2006." I think the party has since learned much of the lesson, although that is not to predict that they will hold fast to their rediscovered truths. But as flawed as the Republicans are, they are infinitely preferable to the modern Democrat party which is infected with a virus of stateism to a degree that it constitutes a real and mortal threat to our constitutional republic.

I part with Beck because he engages in moral relativism when it comes to equating Republicans and their declensions with the truly dangerous threat presented by Democrats. It tells me that Beck misunderstands the nature of the electoral system in America when he tells his listeners to vote for independents. America operates on a two-party system and any deviation from that convention will bring electoral woe to the deviant. I consider that this foolishness is the result of a bent toward libertarianism. The point is not to have fidelity to a business called the Republican Party, the point is that conservatism needs a vehicle to wield political power and there is no viable option exists except the Republican Party which conservatism can exploit to save the Republic.

Otherwise Beck is a great talent and very, very sound.

[meandog]

I basically like Beck because he is a palatable libertarian rather than immured in some hard right wing philosophy.

I have been rather beaten up here because of my opposition to George Bush and his penchant for Rumsfeld's limited war strategy in Iraq.

A Vietnam Vet, I believe in overwhelming force in every consideration of meeting the enemy...a "git thar furstest with the mostest" strategy in beating down foes instead of pussyfooting around them.

The eventual Petraeus surge that put down the insurgents should have been initiated two and a half years prior than it was instead of after "we tuk a thumpin'" in the 2006 mid-term debacle and I'll never for give Bush for his conduct of fighting Operation Iraqi Freedom with a powderpuff rather than a sledgehammer or his "Read My Lips" old man for stopping the first (Operation Desert Storm) drive to Baghdad when American power could have been demonstrated forcefully and fully and perhaps would have meant that 9-11 would have been too deemed too costly for Bin Laden to even try.