From Rodeo Clown to Would-be Scholar: Glenn Beck "Exposes" Obama’s Progressive Agenda in Documentary Series
Reported by Guest Blogger - July 30, 2010 -
Guest Blogged by Margarita
Well, Gentle Readers, I meant this to be a post about Glenn Beck University, but Faith 102 got booted off my priority list by the first in a series of documentaries called "Fundamental Transformation," presented Wednesday night to "Insider Extreme" subscribers of GlennBeck.com. It’s Beck in full Visionary-Transformer-of-America mode; or that’s what he’d call himself at least, though "Demagogue and Rabble-Rouser" might be a better description. Anyway, this series of documentaries is intended to hatemonger expose the Obama progressive agenda. He’s running them as a lead-up to the big rally he’s planning in Washington for the end of August.
Beck didn’t get to the documentary right away. First, we poor Extreme Insiders had to sit through an hour of His Beckness patting himself on the back for his soaring ratings, with the obsequious assistance of partner Scott Baker. We learned that Beck works himself really hard but, as he said, "I feel I have no choice." Because he’s awakening the people. And blowing Keith Olbermann out of the water because Beck doesn’t "treat his audience like morons."
Finally, we got to the documentary. It began by asking rhetorically if people who voted for Obama knew what they were voting for? Did they realize that he was actually going to keep his campaign promise of "fundamental transformation," and impose on poor America a progressive agenda that would lead it down the "road to serfdom?”
The documentary compared Obama to other Progressive Satans. First up: Beck’s well-worn punching bag Woodrow Wilson (who campaigned in 1916 as an anti-war candidate and then immediately declared war on Germany; and who created extra-government agencies like the Federal Reserve to do jobs that should rightly be done by Congress). Then came another popular Beck target, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who blasted Herbert Hoover for excessive spending in 1932 and then turned around and initiated the New Deal, thus becoming "the father of government bailout and entitlements"). The difference between Obama and these other guys, according to Beck, is that they kept their true agenda carefully hidden while Obama kept letting hints of his agenda out (cue a series of quick clips about ACORN, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, blah blah blah).
The documentary asks, what makes Obama such a dangerous Progressive? For one thing, he’s created a crisis. Crises, you see, make people vulnerable - it makes them more accepting of infringements on their rights; and crises also allow leaders to label their opponents "unpatriotic" and "dangerous" (cue clips of various talking heads badmouthing Fox News). So Obama, like Wilson and FDR, is creating "the moral equivalent of war.” (Of course the documentary made no mention of the masters of crisis-manipulation, George W. Bush and his cronies, authors of the "Patriot Act" and vicious vilifiers of anyone who opposed the Iraq War).
With the help of guest commentators like Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute and Jim Powell from the Cato Institute (who has written books bashing both Wilson and FDR), as well as Harvard financial historian Niall Ferguson, the documentary outlined the horrors of Obama’s progressive agenda. Thanks to this agenda, the federal government will shortly control 70% of the economy (they call health care and the banking sector "government controlled enterprises" now, even though last I heard they were still privately run). Now that America is focused on "social justice" which is merely "a euphemism for redistribution of wealth" (oh horrors!!!) America will go trillions deeper into debt and follow other welfare states like Greece and Ireland into financial ruin.
The answer? Cue in stirring music and sepia pictures of the sainted Ronald Reagan. "Restoration" not transformation. Less taxes and less government. Seek honest answers, the documentary concludes. Be vigilant. AMERICA NEEDS YOU!
Gentle reader, I do believe success is addling Glenn Beck’s head. He wants to abandon the "rodeo clown" image and be taken seriously as a scholar and thinker - and as a revolutionary, the Man Who Restores America – back to the age of Robber Barons when we weren’t threatened with such government manipulation as minimum wage, worker safety laws and Social Security. I’m getting a little nervous. He might actually succeed.
