Glenn Beck likes to imagine himself a student of American history. He (mis)appropriates the symbols of our nation’s past to spin morality plays with lessons that he can use to infect his disciples with his mental dystrophy. He speaks a lot about the Constitution, despite his utter lack of comprehension of it. His TV program is on a recruitment drive for “Re-Founders,” presumably a reference to returning our country to a time when wealthy, white, elitists, like himself, were the only ones who could vote, and could also own slaves.
More recently, Beck has adopted the title of one of our most revered political tracts, “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. That title on a tome with Beck’s name below it was always perversely ironic. But now, ThinkProgress has published a fascinating excerpt from another Paine tract, “Agrarian Justice.” The title alone brings to mind the movements for civil, economic and social justice – all concepts that Beck maligns as Marxism. But the specific citations noted by ThinkProgress further reveal what a fraud Beck is as an historian or a political analyst.
“It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.”
“[C]reate a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.”
Essentially, Paine is declaring that all people have an inherent right to the land and it’s product and profit. Those who are granted stewardship of it owe compensation to everyone else. In other words, redistribution of wealth. OMG! Beck is glorifying an avowed socialist who wasn’t even a natural born American. Beck is promoting the philosophy of an illegal alien who aspires to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Beck must therefore be complicit with this plot to destroy the country.
If Glenn Beck had Common Sense we wouldn’t have to be Arguing with this idiot.
Wow it’s all adding up, “America get a pen and paper and come with me”.
His employer (not even a natural born American) having far more dealings with China’s ruling communist party than the likes of Van jones ever has, the three red fists in the tea party logo, his over the top acting and faux conspiracy theories. His contant backtracking on previous stances. The way he made Van jones a hero and household name.
He’s a commie plant sent to confuse and divide the GOP!
It’s obvious be threw acorn under the bus, while ignoring the likes of blackwater and haliburton ( they will run the new American Stasi), I mean hey the more poor people that can’t be helped by acorn, the closer we get to alinsky’s ” overwhealming the welfare system”
Wake up America!
We are on to you Glenn, you pinko lezzo poofo’ bastard!
Wow randomly joining dots in a rant could make mother Teresa look like a nazi
It’s all becoming so clear now. :0
The sad thing is that Beck doesn’t know or care what the truth really is. Even sadder than that is neither do his viewers. My sister is one of them. If Beck says it, it must be true. Sad to say she never uses her intellectual power to prove what he says one way or the other.
damn, i bet you can dominate your sister in a debate, cyberdem. beckbots are horrible debaters and their rebuttals are so ridiculous that its like youre talking to beck himself, no offense to her.
i bet you CANT dominate your sister in a debate, cyberdem. obamabots are horrible debaters and their rebuttals are so ridiculous that its like youre talking to obama himself
i would like also like to restate that you liberals, when asked a justifiable question will simply trash whoever asked you instead of answering them like a reasonable person
You know, you keep saying that us liberals can’t answer a reasonable question, but you haven’t bothered to respond to anything I’ve said. You just trash me and revert to being a BeckBot and regurgitating anything Beck says.
hmm…if only u would put some reasons in ur writing
well…neither do you, you leftist! if this site or obama says it it must be true! thats ur motto!
Oh dear lord, I have been investigating this Radical Murdoch’s history, this is a man who at one point threw his support behind Gough Whitlam, Gough Whitlam! GOUGH WHITLAM! This was a leader who apologised to Vietnam, and looked to recognize China, This man Gough Whitlam was so dangerous even the CIA wanted to take him down, America how did this happen, how did a radical like Murdoch end up in control of Americas #1 cable news network!
This radical (Murdoch) even spoke favorably of that camel murdering socialist Kevin Rudd!
wake up America
A tale of two marches on Washington….
One took place in the late summer of 1963, the other in the late summer of 2009. One was promoted by a preacher from Georgia named Martin Luther King, the other by a former “shock jock” from the state of Washington named Glenn Beck. Ouch! Even mentioning the two of them in the same paragraph is somehow disconcerting.
In 1963, the the people were singing, We Shall Overcome.
Forty-six years later, the chant was, We Shall Undermine.
In 1963, a vast and varied demographic of the American people – all races and religions – descended on the nation’s capitol to peaceably and nonviolently protest an injustice that was occurring in certain areas of the country to people of a certain skin pigmentation.
Forty-six years later, a Convention of Pissed-Off White People – united only by the fact that they were all habitual viewers of a single cable news channel – rolled into Washington to hurl invective at an African American president for creating a mess that he had absolutely nothing to do with creating.
In 1963, the signs people held up were optimistic: “With Liberty and Justice for All.”
Forty-six years later, the signs were ominous: “We Came Unarmed – THIS TIME!”
On August 28, 1963, the hearts of people who marched on the city of Washington DC were filled with love and hope.
On September 12, 2009 they were just full of shit.
Let us boil the comparisons down to their juicy essentials, shall we? Martin Luther King had a dream. Glenn Beck has a scheme.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
we are ALL students of american history. and u know…id like some evidence for all this…i really would
I included a link above to Thomas Paine’s tract, “Agrarian Justice.”
Read it for yourself.
its amazing! an obamabot contradicting his plan involving wealth redistribution? amazing!