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November 21, 2009 - Glenn Beck has announced his
plans to organize a convention in Orlando on March 27, 2010 as part of a
series of "education" meetings leading up to yet another book launch in
August 2010 at the Lincoln Memorial, this time to promote "The Plan" he
has about "Refounding".
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/33398/
This raises the question again - is it about him as a
celebrity organizing events and book launches, or about taking our
country back in the 2010 elections, starting with the primaries?
Is he jumping in front of the parade and pretending to be leading it?
He may mean well, and has certainly done some good things this year, but
Beck should look in the mirror and carefully examine his motives and
actions.
There was concern back in August, as in February and
April, that he still doesn't "get it" about the Tea Party movement.
We are not looking to be educated politically by what he regards as the
"best minds in the country". We have to work at taking our country
back - precinct by precinct, district by district, primary by primary -
as already provided by our Constitution, as our founders trusted we
would do to quickly defend our liberty. We can't just wait until
November and hope for a better outcome. |
| A
reply follows below in response to Glenn Beck's
show of August 28 on Fox News. Glenn highlighted some of the
disturbing choices of "czars" and the radical agenda espoused by many
close advisors to Obama and leaders in Congress. He raised
questions about who has been writing and influencing recent legislation,
and how and why they are trying to transform America. |
| A
week of very popular reports wrapped up on August 28 with
five suggested pledges for all Americans to ask of their elected
officials. This is somewhat similar to the 9/12 project he
launched among his viewers and radio listeners in February, when he thought that the
tea party movement was premature.
Americans proved to be way ahead
of Glenn at the April 15 Tax Day Tea Parties.
They still are. The patriotic resistance to
the liberal insurgency in America is not being driven or led by Glenn
Beck and Fox News. They are just paying attention to it, rather
than ignoring or denigrating it. The
leaders are all local, as a very decentralized movement across the
country rather than the
centralized, statist model of authoritarian rulers telling their loyal
support organizations how to help implement their own agenda.
As in the American revolution, that strategy denies
the tyrants a single enemy to isolate and try to defeat. Instead,
as Glenn intuitively perceived earlier this year, we surround them.
Their power is illusory, as Gandhi demonstrated through well-organized,
persistent, and active but peaceful resistance to British rule through "satyagraha"
(truth and firmness). The consent of the governed still matters in
America, even when arrogant politicians forget that. We don't have
to just wait quietly for 2010 elections and tolerate whatever
legislation and spending or other changes these politicians try to ram
through now. Americans are very creative at finding effective ways
to work together to achieve better outcomes. |
| Here
is how Glenn summarized his week of special reports at the start of his show on
August 28:
Glenn announced at the end of the show that he would cover the
9/12 rally in Washington DC from 1-3pm.
Some other Fox News shows have already started coverage of
the Tea
Party Express rallies, in addition to their extensive coverage
of recent health care town hall meetings nationwide.
Glenn also announced his new book, for release 9/22 - "Arguing
with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government".
Here is what Glenn suggested that Americans do, at the
conclusion of his August 28 show.
 | I believe in a balanced budget and therefore will
vote for a freeze in government spending until that goal is realized. |
| I believe government should not increase the
financial burden on its citizenry during difficult economic times;
therefore I will oppose all tax increases until our economy has
rebounded. |
| I believe more than 4 decades of U.S. dependence on
foreign oil is a travesty; therefore I will support an energy plan
that calls for immediately increasing usage of all domestic resources,
including nuclear energy, natural gas, and coal as necessary.
(NB - he said that common sense meant this also obviously includes
oil.) |
| I believe in the sovereignty and security of our
country, and therefore will support measures to close our borders
except for designated immigration points so we will know who is
entering and why, and I will vehemently oppose any measure giving
another country, the United Nations, or any other entity power over
U.S. citizens. |
| I believe the United States of America is the
greatest country on earth and therefore will not apologize for
policies or actions which have served to free more and feed more
people around the world than any other nation on the planet. |
Our reply to the above suggestion follows below. |
|
Response to Glenn
Beck's suggestion of August 28 |
|
With all due respect, Glenn, you're still way behind the American people
- as you were in February, when you doubted that it was time yet for a
Tea Party movement. |
| This
is not the time to "question with boldness". We
missed that - last election season. Too many
Americans were easily fooled by the siren song of smooth rhetoric and
illusory populist promises of a better future through vague "changes"
while much of the statist agenda was carefully hidden from view until
the tyranny would apparently be too late for anyone to stop.
Like
the
Lorelei, they heard the siren song and were lured to disaster.
They didn't see the rocks ahead until it was too late to avoid a crash.
Too few checked the facts. Their emotions were exploited by
specious politicians in pursuit of power. As in many major cities,
the alluring promises of populist politicians have created islands of
perpetual crises in this land of tremendous opportunities. |
| That
is not a social tragedy which should weigh heavily on the conscience and
charitable instincts of other Americans, as so many liberal politicians
would boldly assert for their own advantage. It is the moral
equivalent of genocide by liberal politicians who have destroyed
innocent lives for their own power. They boldly eliminate
conservative programs which work (as in the DC charter schools) in favor
of their special interest groups, while persistently ignoring the bad
consequences for the victims of their policies.
Now, however, many more Americans finally get it. That's why
Obama's
poll numbers have tanked, and so many Americans now vociferously
oppose his legislative agenda. That opposition will keep growing,
because the relentless arrogance and power ambitions of the statists
will be obvious in their actions. |
| Your
idea of confronting politicians now with your new list of pledges about
whether they share the same core beliefs is just an invitation to
prolong this political theater of the absurd. That is where
Americans were in February, when you started the 9/12 initiative to seek
common ground on basic American values and principles after doubting the
Tea Party movement. The American people are way ahead of you.
We already knew who "we the people" were before the Tea
Party protests last April, and what we believed as individual Americans
with many different points of view. We just needed to get more
friends and neighbors to wake up and pay attention to who these new
politicians were, and what they intended.
Given the frantic pace of their recent power grab and
spending spree, that wasn't too hard for anyone to figure out for
themselves, once they started to forget the populist campaign rhetoric
and pay attention. |
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By their actions, you already know who
they are. It is futile to ask them for pledges. |
| It is
too late for asking questions of these incumbent politicians now.
We already knew who we were, and now we know who they are.
We made the mistake of trusting them, but learned quickly because their
actions soon betrayed the differences from their words, even though the
news media did a terrible job of reporting on the candidates prior to
the election. The signs of danger were there, but nobody wanted to
believe the worst of their candidates. Americans are optimists by
nature. Americans really wanted to believe again
that the politicians we chose would be worthy stewards of our American
dreams and ideals. We can see the differences now from our core beliefs in their actions.
More Americans are finally paying attention, rather than hearing the
tempting siren song
of their specious promises and excuses as they lure us to disaster. It is time
to urgently steer a better path out of this crisis, before America is
literally on the rocks and few good outcomes remain possible. |
| If
the goal is to get rid of specious politicians and the special interests
which are exploiting them to the disadvantage and great expense of many
Americans, then that requires action rather than mere
questions which they can deflect, attack as inappropriate or mistaken,
or simply ignore. |
| We
already know that they will ignore and denigrate protests and even
individual protesters, no matter how polite or bold they may be.
We already know that they will say and do whatever it takes to advance
their own agenda. The end justifies the means for these
specious politicians. |
| Many
politicians will not change their behavior just because we politely or
boldly ask them to do so. We have to start removing them from
office, as fast as we can. They will only change if they
confidently fear the loss of their own power, money, and the social
agenda which they have coveted for so long. Even so, they may remain in denial
and reluctant to change. We can't force them to change their
beliefs. We can only remove them from power so that they can no
longer do harm to us. |
|
Take the keys away from the
politicians who are drunk with their own power. |
| As in
your analogy of an alcoholic, we have to take away the
keys to the car. If we just ask whether they agree that they are
drunk, and then let them drive the car when they declare that they
aren't, then the bad outcome is predictable. They may not crash
and kill somebody the first time this happens, but sooner or later it
will lead to disaster for the people around them.
Taking away the keys won't solve their problem, but it
will reduce their ability to harm others. We have to take
responsibility for being the designated driver if we want America to
recover from those politicians who are drunk with their own power, and
are doing great harm regardless of good intentions. The drunk
driver isn't evil, or intent on harming others. The consequences
of drunk drivers are evil, even though they never intended to hurt
anybody, including themselves.
Government power brings great risks of unintended bad
consequences, regardless of motives. We need to focus on what
politicians have done, not just what they would agree to tell us to
sustain their own power and influence. It is futile to ask them
for pledges that they will act more responsibly. If we can
see that they are drunk with power, we have to take away the keys. |
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Don't ask them to change. Take
responsible actions to solve the problems they are creating. |
|
Specious politicians in any party may say whatever they think will get
them elected at the time. They won't stop attacking their critics
unless they think that it is hurting their own agenda. They will remain
in denial about the problem being themselves. They will project
their own problems onto others. They may pretend to listen, but that
may actually be worse, because it may fool some Americans again.
We don't always have to agree with them, but they should try to represent all
of us. If they pretend to respect us, but their actions speak
otherwise, we need to be vigilant and take action to hold them
accountable. If they don't listen and respect their
constituents, even when we strongly disagree, then they no longer deserve to be
entrusted with the responsibilities of leadership in this republican form
of government. |
| Good
politicians will be more honest about their real beliefs, and their
actions will be consistent with those beliefs. They will be more
clear about their intentions so that their constituents will more
reliably know what to expect of them, whether they agree or not.
They may agree to disagree on some issues, but they will listen and
carefully consider views other than their own.
Above all, they should put their best judgment about
what is good for America ahead of their own personal agenda or
ambitions. They aren't elected to be our rulers and impose
whatever ideas they may have on us. We are entrusting them as
public servants to represent our interests within the constraints of
their carefully limited authority.. |
|
Sycophantic politicians will say and do almost anything to keep their
jobs, so they may appear to be very sincere and responsive listeners.
It is by their actions that you will know the truth. Those who
hold sincere beliefs, regardless of what those beliefs may be, will
stand out from the rest over time. If their actions are
inconsistent with their stated beliefs, then their actions speak louder
than words. It is one thing to be flexible and work to negotiate
good agreements among those who may hold different views on a particular
issue, and quite another matter to say one thing and then do another.
Constituents need to know what to expect of their elected officials. |
|
The facts about active politicians are
out there. We need to find and support better ones. |
| The
facts about the actions of most politicians are readily available to
anyone who makes the effort to look for such information. There is
analysis and commentary from many points of view on a wide range of past
issues. There is the track record of their campaign promises
relative to their actions in office. In the past, the American
public had few reliable sources of such information.
Today, there are so many sources of information that
it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is reliable or not, and to
separate objective facts from partisan bias or deceptive allegations.
Direct lies and deception may be easier to recognize, but Americans
still have generally good instincts about who to trust, and maintain
healthy skepticism of all politicians. In the words of Reagan -
trust, but verify.
Actions differentiate the specious and the deceptive
radicals or sycophants from the more trustworthy public servants.
A politician can be trustworthy and still represent a radically
different or harmful agenda, if that agenda is consistent with the
interests of the constituents rather than personal power ambitions. |
|
How to defeat elected tyrants like
Nancy Pelosi |
| As
one example of the need for better politicians in Congress, Nancy Pelosi
may faithfully represent many liberal zealots in her district, and
sincerely believe in the merits of the policies she espouses. The
fact that she doesn't even respectfully listen to dissenting points of
view by other constituents, however, makes her somebody who cannot be
expected to change. She can be trusted to consistently do what
many Americans firmly believe is wrong, and the only solutions is to
defeat her with a candidate who will actually listen and respect all
constituents rather than just those with whom she personally agrees, or
those who have funded her campaigns to sustain her own power and advance their
own agendas. She won't change. She can only
be removed from Congress if the people in her district agree on the need
to do so. Hope springs eternal, but that hasn't happened yet, and
may not. She may seem to be drunk with delusions of her own power
and infallibility, but that power may appeal to the liberal zealots in
her district. They may think that it is to their advantage,
regardless of the harm she inflicts on America. Her power needs to
be proven to be illusory by defeating many other members of Congress in
2010.
She can still be removed from her role as Speaker of
the House and just become another radical liberal member of Congress
whenever other Democrats lose faith in her leadership. That is the
only check which other American voters still have on her actions.
As Americans start to turn against her radical agenda in Congress, her
party colleagues may soon need a scapegoat for failure, and
push her aside. |
| We can only stop Pelosi by making other Democrats fear for
their own jobs and agendas because of her combative and insensitive style of stubborn,
arrogant leadership. She is not likely to accept the need to
change her actions. She may fervently, and perhaps even correctly,
believe that she faithfully represents the views of the majority of her
constituents, even if she insults and dismisses the views of others who
may disagree with her. She won't change. If she can't be
defeated within her district, then at least she needs to be defeated in
Washington DC by holding many other members of her party accountable.
If the Democrats perceive that they are in danger of losing power in
2010, they will throw her under the bus. |
|
Americans will already know who to
replace, and who to keep. No pledges are needed. |
| If
Americans just pay attention and check their facts through the many available
sources of information and analysis, we are already quite capable
of figuring out who to replace, and who to keep. We don't need
to boldly confront politicians with questions or demands to sign
a list of pledges. We just need to focus on
our own decisions about who to trust as our representatives, as we do at election time.
We need to already
think about it now, rather than wait until late in the 2010 election. If
we don't like the incumbents or the candidates who are already getting
ready to run for office next year, then we need to find and support
better candidates now. It doesn't matter whether those candidates are
Democrats, Republicans, or independents. We need to find
politicians who we trust and are prepared to actively support to win, rather than just criticize the ones who are already in office
or expect them to listen and change. We need to select out the bad
candidates, and find better ones. The time
for apathy or fatalistic toleration of weak or specious politicians is
over. There's far too much at stake now. We need honorable
public servants who earn Americans' trust again. |
|
There's nothing wrong with letting incumbents know what we think,
but we need to make it clear that we will be working hard
to defeat them if they don't change, and we need to
start defeating them now.
Protests may make the protesters feel
better, but they won't necessarily lead to change in the face of
determined tyrants, as demonstrated recently by the
protests in Iran. Ruthless and
relentless repression can work for a long time, even if it is eventually
unsustainable. In America, we still have the Constitutional checks
on power which we need to defeat such tyranny, but only if we act boldly
rather than simply petition boldly with our list of grievances. |
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Find and actively support trustworthy
candidates now. Prepare to win decisively in 2010. |
|
That's the essence of the Tea Party movement. The time has come
for action, not grievances. We are trying to avoid a
revolution, not start one. We are trying to wake up the patriots
to the dangers before our many checks on government power have been
destroyed, and our liberty and prosperity lost.
It's not enough to ask questions boldly, or to demand
answers from our leaders, or loyalty pledges for a few basic principles
on which many Americans can agree. It's not enough to
complain. We have to solve the problem Congress is creating. We have to unite and
work hard to defeat them. We can only defeat the liberal
insurgents by finding and empowering better leaders through our elections.
This fight is at the local level, in every
district across the country. It's not led in Washington, D.C., or
by the Republican Party organization. There are Republicans who
also deserve to be defeated by better candidates, whether in Republican
primaries or by Democrats who will represent their constituents in
Washington rather than support national party leaders regardless of what
their own constituents want.
The sooner that the liberal insurgents feel that they
are going to be defeated in 2010, then the more effective that the
counterinsurgency will become, because these insurgents will alienate
Americans by disrespecting them. They have already done that to a
stunning degree in the health care
debate and the cap and trade
legislation. That fight is not over - but their arrogance, hidden
agendas, and weaknesses have been exposed and Americans are finally
paying attention to the threats to our prosperity now.
The point is to make Congress trustworthy and
effective again at representing Americans, rather than partisan agendas.
That's a huge challenge, as the health care town halls have shown.
The honeymoon is over. Americans are quick to
recognize and distrust abuse of government power. It is not in our
nature, unlike countries with a heritage of being ruled by powerful
leaders, to simply trust our politicians and bureaucrats to do the right
thing. We limit the damage they can do. We carefully protect
our Constitutional powers to peacefully remove them through elections,
and to limit the damage they can do in the interim. Trust, but
verify - and don't bargain from a position of weakness. The
Republicans don't have either the votes or the backbone to stop this
liberal insurgency. That is why it has been up to the American
people to take the lead, not the Republican Party. |
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Defeating the liberal insurgency in
America: a work already in progress, not waiting for 2010 |
| We
won't defeat the radical liberal insurgents by asking them what they
believe, or by arguing about those beliefs, or by asking them to make
pledges to change or moderate their ways. We
will defeat them by uniting with others who are prepared to stand up and
do the hard work necessary to eliminate the sources of power which
sustain the tyranny of these liberal insurgents. We must also
demonstrably deliver better results rather than just different promises.
It is a confidence-building process to earn the trust and support of
people across America to finally stand up firmly against these tyrants. |
| We
don't need to boldly ask questions of such politicians, or seek pledges
from them. We need to ask questions of ourselves.
Are we prepared to commit ourselves to winning this fight, instead of
treating it as somebody else's problem? Are we ready to change how
we approach elections, rather than expect our politicians to change?
We need to unite behind trustworthy leaders who we are ready to actively
support. It's not enough to criticize those who we don't like now
for one reason or another. |
| By
conventional political wisdom, many House and Senate races are "safe"
seats, and relatively few are likely to be subject to change in any
given election. We need to change that thinking in 2010.
No specious politician in either party should feel safe. None
should win without a tough challenge. While it may make sense from
a political party perspective to focus limited resources on some races
more than others according to who is perceived to be more capable of
winning, that should not be the key criteria for the local voters
involved. No candidate should be able to take the support of local
voters for granted. Those local voters may not expect or get much
national party support, but they can still organize to win.
If national party interests or special interests are
taking precedence over the interests of local voters, then that should
be exposed and vigorously opposed. The statist insurgency relies
upon consolidation of power at the national level, and selective
application of such pressure against any local resistance.
That's why it is so important to provide no safe
haven in which these liberal insurgents can feel secure. The
resistance must be everywhere, and hard to isolate or intimidate. Instead
of facing a few weak opponents who can be isolated and vilified, there
needs to be so much opposition that the statist resources cannot be
effectively targeted. Relentless pressure must come from
everywhere. We surround them. Local leaders can adapt
rapidly to seize local advantages without reliance on national
leadership for direction or resources. While liberals focus like a
state planning bureaucracy on defending power in Washington, we can
focus on defeating them at home with demonstrably better candidates.
Their power is illusory. If they try to
intimidate, harm, or denigrate ordinary Americans or opponents, it just
expands the resistance because (unlike Iran), they don't really have the
power to ruthlessly repress any dissent. They may vilify a few
political opposition figures, but they can't really intimidate millions
of American voters. Even their patronage power to buy the support
of special interest groups is illusory, because informed voters will
object to such abuses of power at their own expense.
America still isn't a nation of victim groups
seeking preferential entitlement handouts from politicians. Americans
instinctively distrust government schemes to redistribute wealth,
because that just spreads and sustains poverty and political servitude
rather than independence and a chance for prosperity. The
"American dream" doesn't involve the maximization of government handouts
through political influence, as in the socialist community organizer
model of political looting. Instead, our Constitution constrains
their ability to interfere with our liberty. They still work for
us, rather than rule over us as they please. We just need to
remind some career politicians of that once in a while. |
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