Glenn Beck's Lincoln Contradictions
July 19, 2010
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
I’ve been occasionally watching Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel and think he has done an admirable job of smoking out and identifying the shockingly hardcore, radical socialists who dominate the Obama administration. He has also done a generally good job talking about the libertarian founding principles of America, how they have been lost, and our duty to regain them. But he has been absolutely abysmal when discussing the subject of Lincoln, the War to Prevent Southern Independence, and its legacy. I suspect that the reason for this disconnect with historical reality is that: 1) The Fox News Channel is essentially a propaganda arm of the neoconservative political cabal that has captured the Republican Party; 2) One of the cornerstones of neocon ideology is Lincoln idolatry and hatred of the South and Southerners. (Professor Paul Gottfried, for one, has written extensively about this.) 3) Therefore, if Glenn wants to keep his gig at Fox, he must toe the party line on Lincoln. Being otherwise libertarian – while the Democrats are in power – serves the purposes of the neocon cabal nicely.
To the neocons, Lincoln idolatry serves the purpose of helping to prop up the centralized, bureaucratic, liberty-destroying, military-industrial complex that defines their existence. As William F. Buckley, Jr., the original neocon, declared in 1952, fighting the Cold War meant that "we have got to accept Big Government for the duration," including "a totalitarian bureaucracy within our own shores" with its "large armies, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington." In case you haven’t noticed, for quite some time now the Republican Party has stood for war, war, and more war, and little else. How on earth genuine conservatives who favor limited constitutional government came to embrace Buckley as one of their leading spokesmen is a bizarre mystery.
When I debated one of the gurus of neocon Lincoln idolatry – Harry Jaffa – shortly after The Real Lincoln was published in 2002, he bellowed at one point that "9/11 proves more than ever that we need a strong central government." (In reality, it proved the failure and incapability of "the central government" to protect even its own D.C. headquarters from a few nuts armed with box cutters.) "We need big, totalitarian government to fight all the new Hitlers and potential Hitlers in the world" is the neocon mantra, in a nutshell.
To neocons, Lincoln is the poster boy of militaristic big government that runs roughshod over civil liberties while bankrupting the country with taxes and debt and murdering thousands of innocent foreigners (not that Southerners during the 1861–1865 war were foreigners; they were fellow American citizens). Doesn’t this sound like the Republican Party of today, as embodied in the recently dethroned Bush administration?
Despite his admirable performances discussing the founding fathers, socialism, progressivism, and other topics, Glenn Beck has been absolutely awful and sometimes untruthful when discussing Lincoln and his legacy...
Continue reading...
I’ve been occasionally watching Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel and think he has done an admirable job of smoking out and identifying the shockingly hardcore, radical socialists who dominate the Obama administration. He has also done a generally good job talking about the libertarian founding principles of America, how they have been lost, and our duty to regain them. But he has been absolutely abysmal when discussing the subject of Lincoln, the War to Prevent Southern Independence, and its legacy. I suspect that the reason for this disconnect with historical reality is that: 1) The Fox News Channel is essentially a propaganda arm of the neoconservative political cabal that has captured the Republican Party; 2) One of the cornerstones of neocon ideology is Lincoln idolatry and hatred of the South and Southerners. (Professor Paul Gottfried, for one, has written extensively about this.) 3) Therefore, if Glenn wants to keep his gig at Fox, he must toe the party line on Lincoln. Being otherwise libertarian – while the Democrats are in power – serves the purposes of the neocon cabal nicely.
To the neocons, Lincoln idolatry serves the purpose of helping to prop up the centralized, bureaucratic, liberty-destroying, military-industrial complex that defines their existence. As William F. Buckley, Jr., the original neocon, declared in 1952, fighting the Cold War meant that "we have got to accept Big Government for the duration," including "a totalitarian bureaucracy within our own shores" with its "large armies, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington." In case you haven’t noticed, for quite some time now the Republican Party has stood for war, war, and more war, and little else. How on earth genuine conservatives who favor limited constitutional government came to embrace Buckley as one of their leading spokesmen is a bizarre mystery.
When I debated one of the gurus of neocon Lincoln idolatry – Harry Jaffa – shortly after The Real Lincoln was published in 2002, he bellowed at one point that "9/11 proves more than ever that we need a strong central government." (In reality, it proved the failure and incapability of "the central government" to protect even its own D.C. headquarters from a few nuts armed with box cutters.) "We need big, totalitarian government to fight all the new Hitlers and potential Hitlers in the world" is the neocon mantra, in a nutshell.
To neocons, Lincoln is the poster boy of militaristic big government that runs roughshod over civil liberties while bankrupting the country with taxes and debt and murdering thousands of innocent foreigners (not that Southerners during the 1861–1865 war were foreigners; they were fellow American citizens). Doesn’t this sound like the Republican Party of today, as embodied in the recently dethroned Bush administration?
Despite his admirable performances discussing the founding fathers, socialism, progressivism, and other topics, Glenn Beck has been absolutely awful and sometimes untruthful when discussing Lincoln and his legacy...
Continue reading...
Posted In : Analysis
