The walking Messiah Complex that we know as Glenn Beck has something in store for America. He is not content with having a daily television program, radio broadcast, books, web site, magazine, movies, and live performances. That’s not nearly enough for a megalomaniacal doomsday prophet of Beck’s caliber. He must have more. He must have the attention of every self-deluding dullard that he can herd into his parish. He must have unambiguous devotion. He must have it all. He must have the future.

And that’s why he is developing what he calls “The Plan,” a one hundred year blueprint for the restoration of an America that exists only in his mangled mentality. He longs to return to an era when our founding fathers consumed and polluted our young nation’s natural resources at will. When they slaughtered savage natives and confined them to reservations. When they enriched themselves with the blood and sweat of imported slaves. When voting was the privilege of male landowners. Ah, those were the days.

This is not to say that America’s founders were inherently evil. They had many admirable qualities and ambitions. They drafted a governing document that is still the model for free, democratic societies. But they were not perfect and ought not to be beatified. It is fair to say that a couple of centuries of progress has contributed to our store of wisdom and purpose. It would be foolish to fail to recognize the advances we’ve made and to build on them. Yet that is precisely the path that Beck would have us follow. He has a plan to move us a hundred years – backwards.

Beck’s obsession with plotting out a hundred years of his philosophy was laid out in a speech to his disciples yesterday. To be clear, it was a speech laying out his obsession, not any real philosophy. There doesn’t actually appear to be one. And as is his practice, he focused primarily on the tribulations of our grievous destiny.

Beck: “I’ve done a lot of reading on history the last few years. And I was amazed to find that what we’re experiencing now is really a ticking time bomb that they designed about a hundred years ago at the beginning of the progressive movement.”

A ticking time bomb? Beck’s reading of history has found some sort of Da Vinci coded scheme by a cabal of early twentieth century super-villains determined to destroy an America they would never live to see. These ragtime conspirators lit the fuse a hundred years ago, and today the threat they set in motion serves as Beck’s Apocalyptic siren. It is the trumpeting of the end of days, and in Beck’s ears it is as sure as Gabriel’s horn. Yet it is a fate that is invisible to everyone but Beck. Thank God we have access to his dementia. Otherwise we would never see the bubbling cauldron of calamities right before our eyes. We would be blind to the signs of doom all around us, like the pernicious paintings and sculptures littering Manhattan courtesy of the socialist clan of Rockefeller.

In his speech yesterday, Beck even found hidden clues to the secrets of the Statue of Liberty. She is not what she seems. Beck recited the words carved at her base:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

On the first reading he delivered it hushed tones, almost a whisper, saying that that was the way we had been taught to perceive it. Now I never knew there was a “correct” intonation, but no matter, Beck quickly declares it was wrong. He then commenced a second recitation, this time a cacophony of anger and judgment and spittle running down his chin. This represented the true meaning of the words to him, to which he added, still shouting, “The message is clear…”

“You send the worst of the worst to America.
The people you’ve rejected. The ideas you don’t like.
And freedom will free them. Free their minds.
Liberty will change everything.
My friends, we are in troubled, troubled times.”

That is Beck’s vision of America’s welcome at Ellis Island. It is not an embrace of the world’s downtrodden that they may find peace and fellowship. It is a condemnation of inferiors that they may seek repair. That these diseased and broken souls may be healed. He literally describes Liberty’s poem as “an insult” to foreign tyrants, rather than the appeal to hope that the rest of us heard. It is a vision that perfectly fits Beck’s fixation on creating idols and demons and saviors.

And after excoriating the progressives of yore for their conniving villainy, Beck triumphantly proclaims that “two can play that game.” This is his way of announcing that he too can shape evil plots. He too can form cabals intent on destroying the country. He is openly alerting us that he too can plant a ticking time bomb in America’s foundation.

Beck regards this as his sacred mission. He preaches it to his flock. And over the next year he plans to hold seminars to further indoctrinate his disciples with disinformation and fables that he will convince them are true. And as foreboding as this seems, in the end, Beck cannot prevail. His brand of gloom has never been strong enough to overcome the indomitable optimism of the American people. But sadly, while America will survive Glenn Beck, not all Americans will. And that is why we have an obligation to confront and to counter him. On behalf of those he misleads, and the victims they produce, we must not leave the field to his cult of ignorance.

After spending most of this year denigrating ACORN and the general notion of community organizers, Glenn Beck is now forming his own FAKE-ORN (FAKE Organization of Right-wing Nuts). The big announcement that Beck has been teasing all week is apparently an effort to corral his disciples into an electoral movement that will endure for a hundred years. Does that mean we will have to have him around for that long? {{{shudder}}}

“Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. He says he will promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of conventions across the country featuring conservative speakers, all leading up to a rally in Washington in August to coincide with the release of his book on conservative proposals for the country.”

The nature of Beck’s new enterprise is precisely what community organizers have always done and Beck has long disparaged: bring people together, educate them, and promote their participation in civic affairs. It will be interesting to see what sort of voter registration plans he has in store. Will he seek to serve disenfranchised communities that have been ignored by the political class? Or will he venture into the suburbs to sign up as many Joe the Plumbers as he can find?

Beck told a local Florida Fox affiliate that his conventions will be educational gatherings where he will teach “ethics, history, finance, community organizing and everything American’s need to know about how the government works.” These classes will be something on the order of Hannibal Lechter’s courses on vegetarian cuisine. We can rest assured that anyone graduating from Beck’s seminars will be less informed, or more ill-informed, than when they went in. As for the event in August, it is planned for August 28, 2010, which is the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. That’s an interesting bit of scheduling for a guy who called the nation’s first African-America president a “racist,” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

What do you suppose triggered this fundamental transformation in Beck’s thinking? Why is he suddenly an avid community organizer? I wonder if it has anything to do with the whole affair coinciding with the release of his next book. Beck’s utter lack of expertise in the areas enumerated will prove useful for the building of his army of imbeciles, and will surely achieve his goal of selling more books and expanding the congregation of his TV church.

The run-up to this announcement was repeatedly plugged on his program last week. It was sold as a game-changer for him and his show:

“This show is changing next year. We are moving forward. Cause I’m tired of it. We are going to unveil a plan this Friday…uh…this Saturday in Florida. I am going to be at The Villages in Florida. I’m gonna bring it to you on television if you can’t be there. But I wanted to be able to look people in the eye. I want to see your commitment back. Coming this January, my whole approach changes on this program. There is a problem here, America. And I’m gonna have the…I don’t care what people say about me. Personal responsibility is dead in this country. It is time that we get the little paddles – poof – and bring the body back.”

As it turns out, Beck’s concept of personal responsibility is just another campaign to get conservatives to the polls. The appalling thing about this is that Beck is using his platform on Fox to conduct this campaign. It is not particularly surprising with respect to the role Fox has long played in the media. If anyone doubted Anita Dunn’s assertion that Fox is a wing of the Republican Party, this should allay those doubts once and for all. But the brazen openness with which Fox is now asserting itself as a partisan enterprise should disturb every American and certainly every journalist.

This is not the only example of Fox’s bias. Sean Hannity has a long record of promoting Republican politics. As has Fox contributor and fill-in host, Laura Ingraham. Fox is even the television home to two potential Republican presidential candidates: Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Beck’s web site for his 9/12 project is hosted by Foxnews.com. And the Fox Nation is an unabashed Democrat bashing web venue.

The relationship between Fox and the Republican Party is iron clad. There is no way they can plausibly deny it any longer. The participation of Fox presenters in clearly partisan activities cannot be ignored. Undoubtedly, Fox will broadcast Beck’s rally in August next year. The rally is characterized by Beck as…

“…the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.”

The Plan is the title of the book he will be releasing in conjunction with the rally. In the book he will outline his “100 year plan” to bring the country back from the brink of…whatever it is Beck imagines we’re on the brink of. The fact that Beck is embarking on a 100 year plan says something about his Messianic ambitions. Perhaps the August rally is his attempt to gather the flock for the boarding of the Ark.

Late summer of 2010 promises to be a season of protest. In addition to the August rally for The Plan, Beck is still promoting his second annual 9/12 Project rally that next year will take place on 9/11. The thought of Beck exploiting that day with an event that is known for hostile protests of a decidedly political nature is flat out disgusting. That, along with his August rally date really makes you wonder what this guy is thinking (a futile exercise in the best of circumstances).

Finally, there is a possibility that this isn’t partisan at all with regard to Republicans and Democrats. Beck may be aiming for third party status and an assault on the Washington establishment. In that event he might actually be doing the Democrats a favor, because very few of them would migrate to his camp. Consequently, he would peel off disaffected Republicans and clear a path for more Democratic victories. However, it is possible that his voters, having no actual third party candidates for whom to vote, would either have to console themselves with Republicans or stay home. But if he succeeds in registering enough people who ultimately vote with the GOP, that could sway some contests. So in the end it is still a operation that could favorably impact one party over another.

With evidence like that, and all of the other overtly biased behavior of Fox News, it would be fair to wonder when the Federal Elections Commission might get involved. It seems that they would have an interest in a network that is so shamelessly contributing to a political cause via its expensive airtime and commentary. If they are going to be giving away such valuable assets, some regulatory agency ought to be paying attention.