Glenn Beck's Rally by Western Hero
It is a sad commentary on our public education system when a media personality has caused more people to read The US Constitution and the writings of the founders than has all of the primary and secondary teachers combined
I don't get a chance to see Glenn Beck's TV show, and I only catch snippets of his radio show on the way home from work, but I admire him. I admire him for pulling himself out of a self-made gutter of materialism and alcoholism. Not only did he come back from the brink, he leveraged his talents to become a multi-millionaire who stands atop a multimedia empire.
I admire his ability to educate with humor. What other media personality could hold an audience larger than all of MSNBC and CNN combined while talking about Woodrow Wilson, early 20th Century Progressivism, and the most obscure founding fathers? Beck is a life-long learner, an everyman delving into history and philosophy. He is an example for all of us.
I didn't watch the rally, but I did wade into the poisonous stream of vile liberal invective that reached its high-water mark sometime after the rally. I won't even honor any of it by echoing the lefty lunacy.
We are no longer a nation of laws
A liberal defending big government and bashing Beck maintained noisily that we are a nation of laws. I responded that actually, no, we are not a nation of laws. At least not anymore. When our government passes laws that favor certain groups (sugar farmers, for instance), and creates literally tons of laws per year that they themselves admit they have not read, and when they selectively enforce others, or refuse to enforce them (immigration), then they have made a mockery of the very concept of the rule of law.
We are a decadent nation ruled by the capricious whims of a political oligarchy grown fat upon corporate contributions. But that's OK with the left as long as the oligarchy favors them and their causes. That is what separates left from right today, and it will be the death of progressive democrats: The right has turned a critical eye upon it's own politicians while the left childishly refuses to do the same.
...And I love how Glenn sends the left into bug-eyed apoplexy on a daily basis. It's fun to watch.
Here's what I think about the rally, which drew "hundreds of thousands" according to McClatchy News Service:
We need government, and we need it to perform its constitutional duties efficiently and effectively. We must also never lose our self-sufficiency. Katrina was a tragedy. People just sitting there as a hurricane hits them while school buses sit underwater. Did government benumb them into inaction?
Government has its place, but so does freedom and liberty of each person to rule their own lives and make their own decisions.
Washington, We have an Imbalance
We have an imbalance between personal liberty and government power. That is what Glen Beck is (comically? cynically? self-servingly? genuinely? sincerely?) pointing to.
Too many look to government for too much. Meanwhile, over-reliance on government has caused our self-sufficiency to atrophy, like a muscle that goes unused.
It's about damning the DC-NY crony capitalist connection. It's a shout out to the politicians that the times they are a changin' (Apologies to Bob Dylan). We don't believe their crap anymore.
Statism is so Yesterday...
Have the republicans screwed us over? Of course they have. So have the democrats, who are just as deep in the crony capitalist sewer as the GOP.
Our nation is too big and too diverse for outmoded one-size-fits-all solutions. We don't want to destroy the federal government, we want to restrict it to its constitutional duties so neither left nor right can hijack its coercive power for their own narrow financial and political interests.
The only solution is to take it away from Washington and hand it back to the states and the people. If we screw it up there, then it's our own damned fault
-Silverfiddle
