Posted on 12/29/2010 11:40:27 PM PST by yort
W. Cleon Skousen's book "The Five Thousand Year Leap" has been reissued, and after an endorsement from Glenn Beck, it was even briefly the No. 1 best-seller at Amazon.com. This is bad news for religious conservatism.
Skousen's book is a slipshod mixture of tendentious history, bad theology and paranoid politics in the John Birch Society mold. It ought to be treated as a curiosity of the pre-Reagan right, a fantasy world where communist agents such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Dwight D. Eisenhower worked to undermine America....
The revival of Skousen-esque thinking via Glenn Beck's teary-eyed presentations on the dangers of creeping socialism and the tea party's darker prognostications on President Barack Obama's secret totalitarian agenda present problems for serious religious conservatives....
...Beck's neo-Skousenism is a distraction and a dead end. His ready use of religious imagery appeals to many religious conservatives, but ultimately it is political and spiritual junk food: tasty to some but without substance and poisonous in large quantities.
Forget debates over gay marriage; the traditional kind seems to be in free fall among those vulnerable citizens who could benefit the most from it. This is surely an issue where the republic would benefit from serious religious voices, as opposed to paranoid fantasy presented as saccharine political spirituality.
Over the long term, the revival of the worst strands of Cold War conservatism on the religious right is bad for America and bad for religious conservatives. If vigorously pursued, it will render conservative religious voices irrelevant to serious political discussions. Sadly, the irrelevance will be deserved.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.timesdispatch.com ...
Republicans win because they are the party of religion and that makes it the party of conservatives.
The Democrats are the party of anti-religion and they attract liberals.
The religious are conservative, the anti-religious are liberal is the way conservative/liberal breaks down, you should learn that at some point if you are going to spend time with conservatives.
The top measure for who is a conservative voter and who is a liberal voter, is church attendance, you can layoff your liberal, anti-American, anti-conservative message.
I am trying to read everything Beck recommends and I will form my own opinions. So far, Beck has been a very able teacher/professor. Presently, I am reading THE 5000 YEAR LEAP. Got it for Christmas.
Beck teaches logic and reason.. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, ....George Santayana
YES!
yort is probably a retread.
He is on my most admired list.
The other half, though, is educated enough to see what is happening and they are on the march to inform about our system of government and of how our Constitution is being trashed on that fast locomotive to Communism. The articles and comments on Freerepublic are doing a good job of pointing out the facts.
REALLY?
Gee, I'll take Reagan-type Cold War Conservatism over the mushy-headed, pseudo-religious, libs any day; at least "they" were not affeared to challenge Evil (as in the Evil Empire) head on and were not falling all over themselves to be "inclusive," "PC," and willing to appease any and all of our enemies.
While not in lock step with Beck, he has done as much as anyone to expose the hypocrisy of the Left as well as the complacency of the right to include, to Uber Lib Religious groups, organizations and denominations, while taking on Dear Leader and other Hate-America zealots who's aim is the destruction of our Republic.
Nice try though. Too bad this crap won't fly with most Freepers, who are much more informed, intelligent and knowledgable than the average bear.
...”For the record, I am an Orthodox Jew, and would never in a zillion years vote for anyone on the basis of religion alone like so many blacks voted for obama, or so many Mormons voted for Romney. If you ain’t right, you ain’t right. Period”...
YES! Great point!
He is a likeable guy, but I would not vote for him.
I DVR every show because I am not available when he comes on at 5 p.m. And, there are very few shows I do not watch all the way through. Our cultural institutions are government, academic, religious, media and family and the well-being of our society is dependent upon the morality, integrity and honesty of those institutions. Beck is the whistle blower the corrupt in America and around the world cannot contain..The research his people do is impeccable. They vet everything..How I wish our government would follow that trend and begin with a thorough vetting of the President, his Czars, and of all his appointments.
My guess is that you are one smart Cowboy!
First off, it is not “hyper-emotionalism” which leads me to the error of your second assertion. If liberals are incapable of discerning issues by reason and logic, then how is one to enlighten them to the reality of this society without the use of emotion?
Obviously you know nothing of fishing and how to accomplish the task of actually hooking one, nor do you know anything about the greatest fisher of all time.
While The Leap is not especially well written, the obscure sources are as far as I have checked, reliable and a reminder of the Christian roots of our republic.
While the Left digs out and misapplies Jefferson’s “separation of church and state” quote, they simultaneously denigrate the wealth of source material that supports the Natural Law basis of our Declaration and Constitution.
Yep, Beck and his people do their homework. Of all the radio, or TV personalities, Beck seems to do the most research.
His emotionalism doesn't bother me one bit. I've been listening since 2000 (he was our local afternoon guy) and he has gotten more serious, but that's because he's become better informed. And with more information comes more accountability. I think he feels that deeply.
He's always been a crier, it's just that now there is more to "cry" about.
King was not a communist. There has been no evidence to support that, and quite the contrary, when I began to research this for my book ‘48 Liberal Lies’ I decided it could not in any way be supported and dropped it. His world view, by 1968, was a mixture of everything from Christianity to lower-case communism to existentialism, but an agent? Nope. No evidence at all from the recently released government files on him. HOOVER was convinced he was a communist, but remember Hoover was convinced the Mafia didn’t exist, and Hoover had substantial advance warning about the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack and failed to give it to FDR.
Glenn Beck serves a valuable function in educating the mostly-ignorant public about American history. For instance, he is an ardent admirer of George Washington and frequently brings in writers of Washington biographies to acquaint us with the amazing details of his life and accomplishments. Nobody else could have achieved this.
Here’s another kudo to Beck. He brings in evangelical ministers and authors to discuss Whitfield, etc. (even though he is of the Mormon faith.) He does not “discriminate” as to the theological background of those on his show. He’s not afraid of the “G” word or the “J” word, and where else on TV, or radio for that matter do you hear religion discussed so openly.
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