Originally Posted By mele From article ecdc posted: "I have learned more from Glenn Beck -- learned more about American history and government, from Glenn Beck -- than in the previous 40 years of my life," the retiree told me." That's one of the scariest things I've heard in my life.
Originally Posted By utahjosh Mele, what has Glenn Beck said about American History that makes this scary to you? Just name two or three things, please.
Originally Posted By queenbee <<In this alternate reality version of the past, the 20th century's heroic battles over equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals are recast as a march toward socialism and away from the Founding Fathers. Meanwhile, flawed progressive Woodrow Wilson and even Teddy Roosevelt become America's Lenin and Trotsky while it is the pre-Depression-era Calvin Coolidge who belongs on Mount Rushmore.>> This is a quote from the article. There are several more I could have used. Glenn Beck, crazy person, distorts history. So, for someone to say they learned about history from Glenn Beck, crazy person is concerning to say the least.
Originally Posted By ecdc 1) The United States was founded on Christianity. 2) Joseph McCarthy was a maligned hero who understood the real threat to America. 3) Woodrow Wilson was a socialist. Why is this scary? It's designed to paint a false picture of what America was and then contrast that myth with today, to make people scared that their country is being changed and taken away from them.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt I'm flabbergasted that anyone would try to defend Glenn Beck. The guy is a conspiracy theorist who plays on the fears of the ignorant.
Originally Posted By mawnck I'll defend absolutely anybody I think is being falsely accused. Except maybe Newt Gingrich. I can't stand that guy. ;-) By the way ... >>While I believe my overall point about inciting violence is correct, it's clear that I've picked the wrong example as a jumping off point.<< That's all I was saying. I don't disagree that Beck has been inciting violent behavior on the part of his fanbase of clingers. I'm just opposed to randomly lashing out at the conservative du jour for a specific incident before the facts are in. Doesn't help the cause any.
Originally Posted By ecdc This is why I loathe Glenn Beck and his ilk so much. I spoke too soon and I was corrected. That's a big part of what's made America work - a checks and balances of ideas and rhetoric. We NEED a two-party system. We need one side to balance the other. When the economy is in the crapper, we need the Paul Krugmans to step up and say "giant stimulus now unless you want to be Herbert Hoover!" And then we need the other guys to come in and say, "Inflation, inflation!" It won't be perfect but it's about real issues, important stuff. Ditto terrorism and international relations. Instead, we're left debating a mosque on private property and whether the President is a Muslim. We spend our time arguing stupidity while Glenn Beck laughs all the way to the bank scaring the bejeezus out of simple-minded rubes. He's convinced millions of people that crap that doesn't matter really does matter, and he's taught them a version of American history that couldn't be more inaccurate if Warren Harding were really Daffy Duck. This is what happens when one party tries, with many failures, to govern, and the other party goes completely insane.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "I'll defend absolutely anybody I think is being falsely accused." I wasn't talking about you.
Originally Posted By ChurroMonster With a large segment of our population being whipped up into a paranoid frenzy, who here thinks that another major terrorist attack committed by radical Muslims would result in the masses calling for internment camps for all Muslim-Americans? What if an undocumented immigrant went and shot up a school in Arizona? Would there be a call for their detentions as well? Is the level of hatred and paranoia for certain groups reaching a flashpoint? I'd like to think not but when the Glenn Becks of this world keep stirring the pot who knows?
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Originally Posted By Mr X ****who here thinks that another major terrorist attack committed by radical Muslims would result in the masses calling for internment camps for all Muslim-Americans?**** My personal feeling is, that could possibly happen without even another attack. I hope not, I pray not, but that seems to be the way things are progressing (with a ton of "Christians" leading the way...enthusiastic types like UtahJosh and his ilk...and the half a million who showed up for Glenn Beck).
Originally Posted By plpeters70 Stanley Fish had an excellent opinion piece on this topic today in the NY Times: <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/weve-seen-this-movie-before/?hp?hp" target="_blank">http://opinionator.blogs.nytim...e/?hp?hp</a> Excerpts: <<Now, in 2010, it’s happening again around the intersection of what the right wing calls the “Ground Zero mosque” (a geographical exaggeration if there ever is one) and the attack last week on a Muslim cab driver by (it is alleged) 21-year-old knife-wielding Michael Enright. First the mosque. It is wrong, we hear, to regard the proposed mosque or community center as an ordinary exercise of free enterprise and freedom of religion by the private owners of a piece of property. It is, rather, a thumb in the eye or a slap in the face of the 9/11 victims and their families, a potential clearinghouse for international terrorist activities, a “victory mosque” memorializing a great triumph of jihad and a monument to the religion in whose name and by whose adherents the dreadful deed was done. But according to the same folks who oppose the mosque because of what it stands for, Michael Enright’s act doesn’t stand for anything and is certainly not the product of what Time magazine calls a growing “American strain of Islamophobia.” Instead, The New York Post declares, the stabbing is “the act of a disturbed individual who is now in custody,” and across the fold of the page columnist Jonah Goldberg says that “one assault doesn’t a national trend make” and insists that “we shouldn’t let anyone suggest that this criminal reflects anybody but himself.” The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon. >>
