How Beck transformed a non-liberal truth into a liberal lie

Last night I watched the Glenn Beck segment we initially discussed here (here is full transcript), and it is every bit as bad as George said. I know that Beck isn’t always an idiot, but he came across as one in this discussion, both in what he said and in the overwrought way he said it. His main drift was that Muslim terrorists would unleash multiple Beslan-type attacks against American schools, which in turn would lead to strong actions against Muslims in America, which in turn—and this was the whole object of Beck’s hysterical alarm—would get Muslims around the world angry at us and so increase terrorism.

The argument of Beck and his main guest, the moderate Muslim Zuhdi Jasser, and his second guest, author Brad Thor (the third guest, former NYC Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, was irrelevant), can be summed up as follows: (1) America is this brute of a country whose brutishness—in particular its tendency to blame all Muslims for Muslim terrorism—must be suppressed; (2) the only way it can be suppressed is if the moderate Muslims step forward and oppose not just generic terrorism but al Qaeda itself, thus convincing Americans that Muslims as such are not the problem; but (3) the moderate Muslims, notwithstanding Jasser’s incessant pleading over several years, haven’t done that; so (4) time is running out and the day is approaching when Muslims terrorists will launch widespread attacks against American civilians, and America will react against Muslims as such, and this will lead to a world-wide Muslim reaction against America. In a perverse twist similar to Ron Unz’s despicable statement in Commentary in 1999 that the main thing to fear about the Hispanic immigrant invasion of the U.S. is that it might spark a white nationalist reaction, Beck made it seem that the thing to fear is not a Muslim terrorist attack on America, but Americans’ reaction to that terrorist attack.

BECK: Zuhdi, you and I have talked about this over and over again. This is why you’re on the show all the time. You are a pray-five-times-a-day Muslim. And you have been speaking out. And, I have been saying over and over again—Muslims, you have got to do it now because the day something like this happens, it is going to be too late.

The key to Beck’s thought is the phrase “too late.” Beck doesn’t mean that it would be too late to stop the Beslan-type attacks on America. He means it would be too late to stop America’s anti-Muslim reaction to those attacks. America is the problem, rather than the foreigners who are endangering us.

However, the most significant aspect of the discussion was not the participants’ liberal spin, but the non-liberal truth that was bubbling madly just below the surface. Jasser, by repeatedly complaining that moderate Muslims must step forward to oppose al Qaeda but have not done so, inadvertently proved the very thing he wants to disprove: that the generality of Muslims are not our allies against al Qaeda, and therefore that America would be correct in seeing all Muslims as the problem.

Consider these comments:

JASSER: We have to be strong. We can’t allow terror to get what they want. As Edmond Burke said, the old quotation, “For evil to triumph, good men need to stay quiet.” We can’t do that. As I start my fast tomorrow on Ramadan, I know, that part of my cleansing of what I do is gain the strength not just to condemn terror, but to get Muslims to wake up and start condemning Al Qaeda.

To declare war on them frontally, so that Americans know that we’re not only going to run to defend our mosques, we’re going to run to defend every America. We don’t care primarily about our mosques, but we care about every American and our way of freedom.

THOR: You know what, Zuhdi, you and I haven’t met before. And I really have a lot of respect for what you’re doing. But the time is running out for the moderate Muslim community to raise a voice that is heard in this country. If you look at FBI statistics, in 2000, there were 48 hate crimes against Muslims in the United States. After 2001, after 9/11, that number jumped 17 fold to 481.

I am so worried about what might happen in this country. As much faith as I have in my fellow citizens. The Muslims of this country who are moderate, who are secular Muslims, who do not believe in the Islamist movement really need to make their voices heard. And we need to help them make those voices heard, whatever it takes.

JASSER: You are exactly right. Because the numbers you gave, actually, still in perspective are actually pretty low. It used to be almost negligible and now it quadrupled, like you said. So what we have to do is Americans need to see us leading a charge and not just sleeping. And not being apologists.

The real, unstated theme of the discussion—emerging from the comments that Muslims have not denounced al Qaeda and that time is running out on their doing so—is that the moderate Muslims are effectively on the side of our jihadist enemies. But in liberal fashion Beck and his guests made America—the barbarian “sleeping Giant” as Beck charmingly put it—the main threat.

None of the participants acknowledged the politically incorrect truth they were implicitly admitting: that Muslims as such are the problem, and therefore that it would be a good thing, not a bad thing, for America to defend itself against Muslims as such.

- end of initial entry -

N. writes:

One of the most shocking things about that Glen Beck transcript is this: there was no serious discussion of how to prevent Beslan-type attacks, or how to stop them if they were started. Maybe it is there and I missed it, but I do not see it. There is a definite scent of fatalism, as if such deliberate, evil acts by evil men were actually some sort of force of nature, like a tornado or earthquake.

That kind of thinking wasn’t tolerated in the country I grew up in.

LA replies:

N.’s interesting comment spurs me to post an exchange I just had with George (who initially told us about the Beck program), which I wasn’t going to post because it involved what I thought was a minor correction, but which I now realize is significant.

George wrote:

After seeing the video of Beck’s program on Youtube again, I realized that Kerik did not say we need to be “alert” and “vigilant,” though, that was the gist of his points such as they were.

When I wrote to you initially the replay was not up and I was working from my memory of the show. When I viewed the program originally on Headline News, I would have bet my life savings that when Kerik started talking about “protocols” and “evacuation” plans for schools that he also said we had to need to vigilant and alert.

I replied to him:

It’s a minor point, not worth correcting. Kerik’s inclusion in that discussion was a distraction, as he had nothing to say on the issue at hand.

But what you’re saying is, Kerik’s remarks were even less substantive than you initially thought: you thought he was calling for vigilance to prevent attacks, but in fact all he was calling for was effective first responders, evacuation procedures and so on, a la John Kerry.

The upshot is: no one in that discussion talked about how to prevent Muslim terrorists from attacking America. Kerik, the supposed security guy (who was once nominated for head of Homeland Security until his financial and sexual improprieties scotched that), was focused only on how to evacuate people AFTER an attack, while the concern of the other three participants was that when the terrorists do attack America (which is a foregone conclusion in their minds), America will respond, not by striking back at the followers of the religion of peace, but by showing great forebearance.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 14, 2007 12:20 PM | Send