Beck going through some changes

John Dempsey writes:
Subject: Glenn Beck has an Auster Moment

Might it be that some on the conservative side are finally starting to see the error of their ways; that cheerleading for liberal “conservatives” is really not only unhelpful to conservativism but a detriment to it? Jack Hunter has this short piece at Taki’s about Glenn Beck.

Here’s part of what he says:

When FOX News host Glenn Beck said during an interview with Katie Couric this week, “John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” his comments made headlines. Beck explained that “McCain is this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.” Beck laid out this view in better detail on his television program earlier this month:

I am becoming more and more libertarian every day, I guess the scales are falling off of my eyes, as I’m doing more and more research into history and learning real history. Back at the turn of the century in 1900, with Teddy Roosevelt—a Republican—we started this, “we’re going to tell the rest of the world,” “we’re going to spread democracy,” and we really became, down in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish. It only got worse with the next progressive that came into office—Teddy Roosevelt, Republican progressive—the next one was a Democratic progressive, Woodrow Wilson, and we did … we empire built. The Democrats felt we needed to empire build with one giant global government … The Republicans took it as, we’re going to lead the world and we’ll be the leader of it … I don’t think we should be either of those. I think we need to mind our own business and protect our own people. When somebody hits us, hit back hard, then come home.

LA replies:

When Beck starts saying that the “I am becoming more and more libertarian every day, I guess the scales are falling from his eyes,” because now he understands that “we really became, down in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish,” he’s sounding alarmingly like your typical paleo-lib anti-American.

And what “empire building” did we do under Theodore Roosevelt? The U.S. had no wars and zero major foreign interventions under Roosevelt. The only major overseas action was the Panama Canal. Is Beck opposed to the building of the Panama Canal? Does the “thuggishness and brutishness” for which he now sweepingly condemns America consist of our engineering the independence of Panama so that we could build the Canal?

So, no, not Austerian, more Rockwellian I’m afraid.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 30, 2009 01:24 PM | Send