Posted on 09/25/2009 7:33:20 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
When FOX News host Glenn Beck said during an interview with Katie Couric this week, “John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” his comments made headlines. Beck explained that “McCain is this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.” Beck laid out this view in better detail on his television program earlier this month:
I am becoming more and more libertarian every day, I guess the scales are falling off of my eyes, as I’m doing more and more research into history and learning real history. Back at the turn of the century in 1900, with Teddy Roosevelt—a Republican—we started this, “we’re going to tell the rest of the world,” “we’re going to spread democracy,” and we really became, down in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish. It only got worse with the next progressive that came into office—Teddy Roosevelt, Republican progressive—the next one was a Democratic progressive, Woodrow Wilson, and we did … we empire built. The Democrats felt we needed to empire build with one giant global government ... The Republicans took it as, we’re going to lead the world and we’ll be the leader of it … I don’t think we should be either of those. I think we need to mind our own business and protect our own people. When somebody hits us, hit back hard, then come home.
Beck is trying to explain how Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican precursor to what historians call “liberal internationalism,” a foreign policy view that contends the role of the U.S. is to intervene around the globe to advance liberal objectives. This progressive doctrine, later called “Wilsonian” after Woodrow Wilson, was intended to “make the world safe for democracy,” to quote our 28th president. Wilsonian globalism was embraced fully by George W. Bush, and as Beck notes, was also a guiding philosophy for his could-have-been successor, John McCain. In their application, there is very little difference between “neoconservative” foreign policy and “liberal internationalism,” and both views are progressive in origin.
Preferring to keep his audience in the dark on such distinctions, neoconservative talk host Mark Levin was angry that Beck would dare shine a light on them. Said Levin this week:
McCain is no conservative… but to say that he would be worse than a president who’s a Marxist, who’s running around the world apologizing for our nation, who’s slashing our defense budget… to say he would be worse is mindless… incoherent, as a matter of fact. There’s our 5 PMer on FOX.
It should be noted that Beck’s FOX News program airs at 5 PM EST.
Who else does Levin consider mindless? He continues:
I don’t know who people are playing to; I don’t know why they’re playing to certain people. Ron Paul’s another one ... this fascination with Ron Paul. Ron Paul, who blames America! American “imperialism,” quote, unquote, for the attacks on 9/11. How can any conservative embrace that? And yet the 5 PMer does.
For eight years, hosts like Levin and even Glenn Beck promoted full-blown neoconservatism without ever calling it by that name. For these mainstream pundits, conservatism simply equaled neoconservatism, and during the Bush years there was no talk of limited government, no concern about “socialism” and no real worries about anything else, other than the War on Terror. The Republican Party was a single issue party; Ron Paul was considered crazy, Joe Lieberman was considered cool—and government exploded.
But much to Levin’s chagrin, that impenetrable neoconservative unity no longer exists. Unlike Levin, Beck now claims “the scales are falling off of my eyes,” and he now questions old assumptions about foreign policy, the value of the GOP, the worth of the two-party system, or even if McCain would have been any better than Obama. Conservative columnist George Will once cheered Bush’s foreign policy, but now thinks it’s time to bring the troops home from both Iraq and Afghanistan. When Sarah Palin spoke in Hong Kong this week, a Wall Street Journal headline read, “Palin, Sounding Like Ron Paul, Takes on the Fed.” Few conservatives get excited by Joe Lieberman anymore. But many are starting to talk like Ron Paul.
The attacks on Beck by Levin are a reflection of what’s happening on the American Right as a whole, where the old fools’ game of merely corralling grassroots conservatives into the Republican Party is suffering from a severe shortage of fools. I’m not saying that Beck is an all-around, reliable conservative figure, nor do I believe the Republican Party is going to start seriously listening to Paul in the future, but there are at least now, finally, tiny slivers of truth making their way into the mainstream, thanks in no small part to a handful of celebrity truth-seekers, no matter how eccentric or inconsistent they may be.
And if there’s one thing we can be sure of—there would be no tea parties, no town hall protests, no marches on Washington, no questioning foreign policy, no attacking the Federal Reserve, no new-and-improved Glenn Beck and no new respect for Ron Paul—if John McCain had won the election. The neoconservative agenda would have continued, undisturbed, and according to plan. And something tells me Mark Levin would have preferred to keep it that way.
The Lord moves in mysterious ways. Maybe having Zero in office will wake people up. McCain is the slow boiling of the frog while BamBam is just dumping it in scalding water.
I just hope and pray that people wake up in time to reverse the damage this administration is doing to the country.
Bingo.
It’s not very engaging to listen to Levin carry on about the 5 pm’er.
Conservative radio hosts who attack each other keep themselves in the ‘peanut gallery’ of conservative talk radio by their pettiness; Savage being a prime example. I have not seen Rush do this.
I'm learning there's a lot of that going around. I listen to a country radio station here in Phoenix that has a morning show called "Tim & Willie." Now I don't know who Tim is, but apparently he used to have a show with Glenn Beck. For two days in a row this past week, he was making comments about Glenn Beck on the air, and while he was polite, he is obviously not a fan of GB. He made him out to be an arrogant, pushy, obnoxious "dork" (I think he called him) who stepped on whoever he had to in order to get up the ladder. If I recall correctly, people said the same thing about Bill O'Reilly early on in his tenure at Fox.
It's not going to change my opinion on Beck, but I found it curious that he said it this week that the book is coming out.
I’m all in favor of advancing demicracy over the globe,as it amkes the world safer and more productive. I’m also in favor of exporting liberalism — why should we be the only country to have that ball and chain dragging our production down?
Levin and Beck agree on one thing - Sarah Palin is indeed a cut above the rest in the GOP and the only person capable of rekindling the Reagan flame.
Bingo. Relativism is a tarpit for conservatives, and it should be.
I used to like Beck, but he turned me off with his constant broad brush of lumping Repubs in with the corrupt/commie Dems. Not even close.
Yeah... but I think we're beginning to see that rational, serious intellect doesn't count as much among "conservatives" as it used to.
Mercurial is how I would describe him...he’s been doing some very good/useful things for those who fear what Obama is doing to America, but I don’t trust him. There’s too much of him in what he is doing.
Mark being accused of being jealous of anyone is a joke. Two of the hosts who have better ratings, Sean and Rush, he is both completely gracious towards. IMHO, this isn't about jealousy or ratings, this is about calling out behavior that is 'clownish'. Beck started out well but he seems to be losing it. I like the guy, don't get me wrong, but he is making himself a target and a poster boy. (..and don't get me started with the whole Obama would be better than McCain comment..)
Bingo. Had McLame won, he would have reached agreement with the libs and Republicans would have lined up behind their guy. We would long ago have had some type of socialized medicine bill and we would be well on our way to legalizing some 10 million illegals and importing another 20 million of their relatives relatives - cementing democrat power for eternity.
I’ve never been a big fan of Savage, but I used to listen to him when I went to the gym. He started bashing Rush as “the golfer” and I just turned him off. He’s wound up so tightly about being banned from England that he’s not even interesting anymore. It’s all he talks about.
Ronald Wilson Reagan could never be characterized as a paleo-con or libertarian.
not hardly...my vision is for about 100 million individuals to stand up and demand a return to American exceptionalism...
and when they [ALL the scum pols in All the capitol buildings coast to coast] thumb their noses at us, that we simply march down and rip them ALL apart, limb from limb, and remind those who wish to SERVE the country what their place actually is...
People always try to garner attention by attacking someone more successful than themselves. That’s one reason so many people (in broadcasting) have attacked Limbaugh over the years.
You so succinctly describe my exact same observation, conclusion, and uber-worry.
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