Posted on 02/21/2010 9:52:43 AM PST by greyfoxx39
Saturday Night Beck [Bill Bennett]
Theres a lot to say about CPAC. This morning the major papers are highlighting Glenn Becks speech. I like Glenn a lot and I think he has something to teach us. But not what he offered last night.
Analogizing his own struggles with alcohol to the problems of our polity and in our politics, he said, Hello, my name is the Republican party, and I have a problem! Im addicted to spending and big government. It is still morning in America. It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding, hung-over, vomiting-for-four-hours kind of morning in America. And its shaping up to be kind of a nasty day. But it is still morning in America. And, again, I believe in redemption, but the first step to getting redemption is youve got to admit that youve got a problem. I have not heard people in the Republican party yet admit that they have a problem.
Glenn is among the best talkers in the business of broadcast. I am not sure hes a very good listener.
First, there is a good and strong tradition in alcohol and drug treatment that personal failings should not be extrapolated into the public sphere; that too often when this is done, conclusions are reached based on the wrong motives and, often, the wrong analysis. Glenn has made that mistake here and taken to our politics a cosmologizing of his own deficiencies. This is not a baseless criticism; they are his own deficiencies that he keeps publicly redounding to and analogizing to. It is wrong and he is wrong.
Second, for him to continue to say that he does not hear the Republican
Third, to admit it is still morning in America but a vomiting for four hours kind of morning is to diminish, discourage, and disparage all the work of the conservative, Republican, and independent resistance of the past year. The Tea Partiers know better than this. I dont think they would describe their rallies and resistance as a bilious purging but, rather, as a very positive democratic reaction aimed at correcting the wrongs of the current political leadership. The mainstream media may describe their reactions as an unhealthy expurgation. I do not.
A year ago, we were told the Republican party and the conservative movement were moribund. Today they are ascendant, and it is the left and the Democratic party that are on defense even while they are in control. Thats quite an amazing achievement. But anyone who knows the history of this country and its political movements should not be surprised. America has a long tradition of antibodies that kick in. From Carter we got Reagan. And from Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama we took back a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, with midterm elections on the horizon that Republicans and conservatives are actually excited about, not afraid of.
To say the GOP and the Democrats are no different, to say the GOP needs to hit a recovery-program-type bottom and hang its head in remorse, is to delay our own countrys recovery from the problems the Democratic left is inflicting. The stakes are too important to go through that kind of exercise, which will ultimately go nowhere anyway because its already happened.
The first task of a serious political analyst is to see things as they are. There is a difference between morning and night. There is a difference between drunk and sober. And there is a difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. To ignore these differences, or propagate the myth that they dont exist, is not only discouraging, it is dangerous.
LLS
Gambling addict Bennett climbs aboard his teetering soapbox and scolds alcoholic Beck who readily admits is disease.
Bennett still bets on the GOP Beltway Boys because he is one.
Beck is correct about one party taxing and spending and the other spending and taxing less.
Either way we’re screwed.
No change equals no recovery.
Good advice!
LLS
Just as mad? That is emotional nonsense.
Yea, right.
BTW: does anyone know where a decent quality video I can download of that speech? I'm not interested in a stream, but want a file that I can share.
Mr Beck is most certainly way off the reservation with his constantly claiming to be the product of having found his way to AA and parading his “recovering alcoholic” status.
AA’s Big Book says: “To show other alcoholics PRECISELY HOW WE HAVE RECOVERED is the main purpose of this book” (page xiii) And says recovered scores of other times, too. And AA also includes “anonymous” in its name — and in its tenets. That is so those sufferers of the disease who haven’t found AA yet, don’t have to look at those who trumpet their membership and think, “Hell, Man, I’d rather be drunk than be a Glenn Beck!”
“Recovering alcoholic,” meanwhile, is the invention of the fraudulent “treatment” center industry and of those statisticians who prefer we call them “psychologists.” And of those “drug and alcohol” “councilors” and “therapists” who lump the disease of Alcoholism (that has a diagnosis and recognizable symptoms) together with the consequences of bad choices and worse actions those who’ve made them and taken them prefer we call “addiction.” Yet another bullsh*t word invented by those who make their living defrauding insurance companies.
As for the “libertarian” Mr Beck’s take on any real similarities between actual Republicanism and the vast criminal enterprises that prefer we call them by their street name, the “Democratic” potty?
In my judgment Mr Recovering Beck’s a better front man for the touchy-feely health-insurance-company robbers than he is for we lovers of America’s Founding Law.
Glenn Beck - a buffoon by any other name!
PALIN/BOLTON/2012!
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