Tim Rutten says of Glenn Beck: "The Fox News personality is strangely bent on linking the president - and race - to liberation theology, evidence to the contrary be damned."
Reciting the national anthem at Glen Becks's honor restoration rally in Washington, 08/28/10. (photo: Getty Images)
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How on earth anyone connects that to Barack Obama is anyone's guess?
How about two more books to supplement your Fanon/Zinn perspective: Thomas Sowell's BLACK RED NECKS AND WHITE LIBERALS and Friedrich Hayek, ROAD TO SERFDOM?
You do realize, don't you, that many responsible academics pride themselves in being extremely well acquainted with the many sides of an issue and numerous world views? Do you really think that Obama or any scholar would base his or her thinking solely on one school of thought? A single range of inquiry? As for Sowell...pullleeezz.
I do realize this, and that is why I assign in my classes both Marx's Comm. Manisfesto and Hayek's Road to Serfdom. Let them decide on their own. Unfortunately, this is not a case with the majority of academics who have been clearly leaning toward the "Left" perspective. This is, as you said on another occasion, an "imminent FACT," empowered by aged tenured adminsitrators who were saturated with Fanon/Zinn-like ideas. Why and how it happened is another issue, which we have no room to cover here. Obama learned from these people. Remember President himself admitted in his Dreams of My Father: "I chose my friends carefully... Marxists professors, radical feminiists." Yet, I have to give him credit. Trying not to polarize the country, he did attempt to dissociate himself from this religious ganster named Rev Wright.
Helping others is evil. Greed is good. Vice is virtue. Virtue is vice. Humans have both inclinations...but all want to think of themselves as 'righteous.' So, they have to redefine what is evil and what is good. If it is evil to help others, then greed is good. You can't change human nature, but you can get wealth and power by exploiting its dark side. The straight and narrow, the ethical and moral has always been a hard sell. It requires sacrifice and being subjected to ridicule, mockery, persecution and sometimes martyrdom. Those are the laws of human nature. So, where are those willing to make the sacrifices and how are they portrayed in the media? We have been spoiled and have not made the sacrifices needed to counter the Rovian dark side and are waiting for the other guy to do it. That will not work.
Otherwise I agree with what you said
I cannot think of anyone so unlike Evita than Sarah Palin. Eva Peron was a successful actress and personality before she met Juan and was immersed in politics and as a genuine populist who efforts were on behalf of the poor and oppressed. She used her fame and her position to improve the lives of the lowest classes much to the disapproval of the wealthy and military classes. She worked herself into exhaustion running a charity to help workers, the sick and helpless overcome the effects of institutionaliz ed poverty. She used government channels to do it.
Palin prevented her state from aiding the Inuits when they were freezing and hungry. Palin is the anti-Peron.
And Left Wing too.
Beck and others are experts at that manipulation. These high profile people are not the only source of confusion and misinformation, either. It is happening on a state and local level and businesses and agencies are being infected in their personal lives, using the same techniques to manipulate those around them.
Corruption and bad entertainment definitely are infectious. Let's just hope citizens gain some strength and resist the urge to react with violence against the "enemies" the Beck types are offering up.
I think it is an error to speak of what Beck believes. It is mostly show, for the money, and Beck is a great actor by pundit standards at least. There is little knowing what he believes other that he believes that whatever he does will make him money.
This is as simple as I can make it: Capitalism is our economic system. Democracy is our political system. They are two different things. The rub is that one has to be the boss. It used to be democracy and Beck and all far-righters are trying to switch it to Wall street. It never ends well.
PS. Just how much did Jesus charge for the loaves and fishes?
No reason to stay in this bad marriage. Let's file for a no-fault divorce based on irreconcilable differences.
Free enterprise? Doesn't exist anymore given corporate monopoly over the market. Reduce federal spending: Yes! Cut corporate welfare and military spending by half. Problem solved.
As for your final comment, you may be quite correct. That you believe that any public figure of substance is Marxist assures this. As for welfare states: there is no other kind of state.
I do strongly agree with one part of your message. Yes, yes, of course, cut corporate welfare and military. No doubt. And that is the major problems with many conservatives, who do not want to touch this. Just like Dems guard their welfare programs for the "wretched of the earth," Reps have their own sacred cows. See, here is the problem that disturbs many people today, who cannot stand this situation anymore. Several generations of corporate leaders and, yes, folks down below grew up with a sense of entitlement. I cannot forget how disgusted I was when some of my Polish/Russian/Hungarian friends played a "Jewish card" in 1990-1991, pretending they were persecuted Jews. The goal was to get US residency permits and "sit on welfare," as some of them put it. If welfare was so easy to "sit on," there would have been less waste. The same with corporations: I honestly do not understand why we need to bail out GM, Goldman Sachs, ect. Let the bastards fail.
When wealth inequality becomes extreme, redistributive economic policies (primarily high top tier taxes) act to encourage competition by breaking up monopoly and preventing further entrenchment of elite power. You should read someone other than Ayn Rand.
Is Beck even a Catholic??
Hasn't he heard of "Thou shalt not lie"??
That being said, so what?
Beck is demonizing Liberation Theology because it differs from the brand of Christianity that he grew up with. Another example of Right-Wing Conservatives wanting to make the world in their image.
A communist capitalist state!? Hmm...Sounds interesting, and in fact, exactly describes the situation where current China lingers on. For how long? I am wondering if you can be a little bit pregnant? Eventually, I think they (Chinese) will have to decide which way they will be going. If they unleash the forces of economic freedom more and more, it will at some point require political freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to vote etc), which will eventually undermine their soft communist dictatorship unless their comm. elite decides to turn the clock back (like in 1989). As for China becoming the number two power, who knows - miracles happen. So far, as I see, Chinese folks use each opportunity and all their ingenuity to sneak into here(US) or at least into Canada to live right in the "belly of the beast" (stinking capitalism)
Yes, it is interesting that communism is not necessarily a contradiction of capitalist economic practice, any more that socialism would contradict democracy. I mean, political ideology and economic systems don't necessarily seem to always match. Rest assured, a majority of people in socialist states prefer socialism and also like a robust capitalist economic structure.
Oh, and China becoming the number two economic power on this planet is an imminent FACT, empowered by it's capitalistic economic behaviors, and you can be sure it will remain a quasi-communist/socialist state, perhaps for the long distant future. As "freely" as our way of life happens to be.
Is this American? It sure is. See works of Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, and other "Founders." The needs of the community must not be ignored.
For example, there's a woman by the name of Orly Taitz, a Russian-born naturalized American citizen (since 1992), who started the "birther" movement. She got headlines when she created not one but TWO obviously phony Obama birth certificates, yet she still commands the stage whenever she chooses to speak. This obvious lie has been propagated not only by extreme right-wingers, but by Fox News and Republican members of Congress (Can anyone say the Senate Minority Leader?). Just outrageous!
The need for news in every 24 hour television and radio program and the liberty to flaunt even the most twisted player, such as Taitz, is rendering the U.S. a tottering, overweight, slobbering laughing stock.
The Catholic Church has moved on but Glenn Beck is stuck back in high school acting out against perceived commies in the priesthood.
His disavowal of Rev Jeremiah Wright bears this out.
Wright speaks from experience and truth.
Obama's pathological quest for bipartisan support should have educated him enough to realize it would never occur.
He wants to be the "pragmatist" and hopes history will record him as such.
Look at Jimmy Carter.
A decent man who was more a humanitarian than Obama but whose legacy was buried or ultimately ridiculed by the rightwing corporate media.
Beck is no academic.
At best, he's a two bit demagogue with absolutely no handle on sociology, history or political science.
He's a lazy thinker ... with the exception of his sense of showmanship.... which to an intelligent person would appear cheesy at best.
This is the state of the struggle.
As americans we can only hope and wait til' a better show comes to town.
Wright speaks from experience and truth.
Are you serious of joking, writing this stuff about Obama and Wright? Although not a fan of Obama, I have to jump to defend the guy. What did you want President do to? To publicly endorse Rev. Wright's "wisdom" and "truth" of Afro-centric views?
Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts
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