There’s no doubt about it. The United States economy is still reeling from the effects of one of the worst recessions in its history. It is piling up massive debt and struggling to produce even modest growth and job creation. At the same time it is embroiled in two wars overseas that are costly on matters both fiscal and fatal.

In response, Congressman David Obey floated a proposal that a new tax on high income earners be imposed to cover the costs associated with any escalation of activities in Afghanistan. This sensible suggestion is an attempt to restore responsibility to wartime economics. If the nation is going to engage in an expensive adventure that puts its citizens lives at risk, it ought to be willing to ask those who remain at home to chip in and insure that the military and personal needs of our soldiers are met. It’s called shared sacrifice.

From Glenn Beck’s perspective, however, this is just another political maneuver by Democrats to hasten the socialistic utopia Beck imagines they are plotting. He insists that it is a continuance of President Obama’s campaign to redistribute the wealth. In a way, Beck is right. It is an initiative to redistribute wealth from chickenhawks like Beck to soldiers on the battlefield. And Beck will have none of that.

In his patented drool-dripping diction, Beck commences reasonably enough by declaring that war “should qualify as a shared sacrifice.” But then he veers into irrational demands that strain any effort to understand.

“What sacrifice are you willing to share? Shave your armpits, sign up for a tour of duty and share the sacrifice.”

Is he directing this exclusively to women? Or are all recruits expected to shave under their arms these days? It may be best to set that aside for the time being and focus, not on armpits, but on Beck’s call to arms. What is notable about Beck berating others to enlist is that he never did so. Not in his youth, nor for the current wars in which he claims to believe. Beck was 37 years old in 2001. He could have signed up after 9/11, and during any of the five years thereafter. But apparently shared sacrifice was secondary to seeking radio stardom.

Beck is not only opposed to sharing sacrifices by spreading the costs of war to all citizens, he believes that the sacrifice Americans ought to be making is in the area of their own well being. He argues that domestic initiatives like health care should be curtailed in favor of war funding. And his specific approach to this theory is particularly grotesque – and false:

“I don’t see Americans dying in the streets as they’re waiting in line to the hospital because they’ve been shot in Detroit. They get in to a hospital. You know where I do see them dying? Afghanistan. Nobody died because they didn’t have health care. Nobody!”

I’m quite certain that Beck is telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t “see Americans dying in the streets.” He certainly wouldn’t see them in the streets of his gated community in Connecticut. A media celebrity who earns tens of millions of dollars every year is not likely to encounter many shooting victims in urban Detroit. But even more egregious is his claim that nobody has died because they didn’t have health care. It would not have taken much research to discover this report published by Harvard Medical School just a little over a month ago:

Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

Glenn Beck is a wealthy, well-insured, elitist who has never served in the military. Yet he is comfortable lecturing everyone else on what it means to share sacrifice. He is content to allow thousands of Americans to die here at home – ten times the number every year than have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in eight years – so that he doesn’t have to pay a little more of his millions in taxes. And then he has the gall to belittle others for failing to show due consideration for the troops.

An equally disturbing aspect of this is that, in pursuit of his greedy selfishness, Beck will deliberately misinform his legions of deluded disciples about the facts related to health insurance deficiencies and abuses. With his proclivity for purposeful deception he joins his Fox colleague, Bill O’Reilly, who still insists that there are no homeless veterans.

The only lessons to be learned from Beck’s sermon on shared sacrifice are sadistic, shameless, self-serving, specious, and quite literally sickening.