Not sure what you consider "often," but while people may object to Beck's delivery and style, with a few exceptions, Beck is generally consistent with other small government conservatives and moral libertarians. He's done more scholarship and research on the roots and history of the progressive movement than pretty much any other notable conservative. He's passionate about America's founders, and while there may be some self-styled hardcore Evangelists who will decry Beck's Mormonism, no less than Liberty U gave him an honorary doctorate. For every instance you can give of where Beck may have strayed from or opposed conservative orthodoxy, I'm certain one can find at least 9 instances where he's stood tall for it. 10% disagreement does not an enemy make.
I oppose his caving on Romney at the last min. I oppose his nebulous and possibly mormon related floppery on gays. I oppose his BC BS which seems to me to be ratings driven. I oppose men who cry on command for sympathy. I oppose men who use their past alcoholism for the same reason. And I are one so it’s not an abstract concept.
As I said, he HAS done good things. Ann Coulter did many good things too. But as she proved, her conservatism varies with wind direction.
Would you personally trust him with the life of your family based on his public actions? I wouldn’t. And what he is doing contributes to the lives of my family and to yours. Personally when I total my scorecard, he isn’t in the black. There are far worse out there to be sure. But he ain’t helping.
“. He’s done more scholarship and research on the roots and history of the progressive movement than pretty much any other notable conservative.”
Oh please. Beck is not a scholar and does no research. If you want to see research and scholarship pick up Gabriel Kolko’s 1963 book “The Triumph of Conservatism”. Kolko is a scholar specializing in the Progressive Era and his book is written from original research at the National Archives, Library of Congress, U Va, Columbia, and so forth.
Beck is at best a popularizer of the politics of an era most people never study. The Progressive Era gets neglected because it largely concerns business and the beginning of government regulation. The wars that bookend it are more interesting for most readers.
But anyone familiar with William Jennings Bryan, Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson will know a good deal about the Progressive Era. And considering the howlers I’ve heard come out of Beck regarding other eras you’d be wise to do your own reading.
The American Conservative wrote this of Kolko, who although of the Left has many views in harmony with the Right:
“For Gabriel Kolko, the enemy has always been what sociologist Max Weber called “political capitalism”—that is, “the accumulation of private capital and fortunes via booty connected with politics.” In Kolko’s eyes, “America’s capacity and readiness to intervene virtually anywhere” pose a grave danger both to the U.S. and the world. Kolko has made it his mission to study the historical roots of how this propensity for intervention came to be. He was also one of the first historians to take on the regulatory state in a serious way. Kolko’s landmark work, The Triumph of Conservatism, is an attempt to link the Progressive Era policies of Theodore Roosevelt to the national-security state left behind in the wake of his cousin Franklin’s presidency.
Kolko’s indictment of what he calls “conservatism” is not aimed at the Southern Agrarianism of Richard Weaver or the Old Right individualism of Albert Jay Nock. In fact, Kolko’s thesis—that big government and big business consistently colluded to regulate small American artisans and farmers out of existence—has much in common with libertarian and traditionalist critiques of the corporatist state. The “national progressivism” that Kolko attacks was, in his own words, “the defense of business against the democratic ferment that was nascent in the states.” Coming of age in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Kolko saw firsthand the destruction of the “permanent things” as the result of the merging of Washington, D.C. and Wall Street. A sense of place and rootedness lingers just beneath the surface of his work.”