I am going to surprise many Freepers and distress many fans of Glenn Beck, author Kathleen Parker has got it right: Glenn Beck's addiction and recovery explain much of his wonderfully successful rally at the Lincoln Memorial to Restore America's Honor. It explains Beck's spirituality and the fact that he wears it on his sleeve. After all, it was through a spiritual epiphany that he found sobriety and even life itself. This is a mighty achievement. Few indeed among millions of alcoholics and addicts who can find survival much less sobriety. Most simply die.
"Like other successful revivalists – and giving the devil his due – Beck is right about many things. Tens of thousands joined him in Washington and watch him each night on television for a reason. But he also is messianic and betrays the grandiosity of the addict."
I wonder, Ms. Parker, if you would deny that Martin Luther King Jr. was "messianic?" Was he also grandiose? I suppose that is in the eye of the beholder. In either case, King or Beck, hundreds of thousands joined him in Washington.
I should not be surprised if Glenn Beck would be the first to cheerfully admit that his triumph over drugs and alcohol is far more important and of much more merit than his rally. In either case, I have no doubt that he would give the credit to God. I believe he would count himself as sincere when he does so. The problem, Ms. Parker, is that the Book tells us, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Was Martin Luther King's heart completely free of deceit? He was, we now know, rather fond of the ladies. There is no evidence that Glenn Beck dallies these days in this deceit. What do you say about the relative level of deceit in these men?
When Barak Hussein Obama told us that "we are the ones we have been waiting for," or that the seas would now recede because he had been elected, could you kindly tell us, Ms. Parker, which of the two, Obama or Beck, is the more grandiose?
You complain that Beck cannot go 16 hours without referring to the deity, would you reveal your choice to us, Ms. Parker, about whether you have more confidence in a man who repeatedly refers to God or do you have more confidence in a man who cannot remember virtually anything in his preacher told them in the course of 20 years?
Beck is a man who is not without sin. But the big difference between Beck and King is that Beck follows the biblical injunction and confesses his sins and repents of them, so far with stupendous success. He is after all sober. King kept his mistresses. Barak Obama is a narcissist with a singular inability to admit he is ever wrong about anything. The man is utterly incapable of repentance.
Clement Attlee was a socialist who very nearly wrecked England when he came to power after World War II. Churchill's quip about modesty does not apply to any of the three men under discussion above. The point is that modesty could not redeem the trail of consequences left in Mr. Attlee's wake. We are all flawed, to quote the Book again, we all sin and we all fall short of the glory of God so perhaps it is the wiser course to judge a man by how he deals with his shortcomings. I think Glenn Beck has done so admirably.
Ms. Parker condescendingly says, "Let's hope Glenn gets well soon."
Ms. Parker, he already has.
