Why Beck’s Jingoism Appeals

to His Many Followers

I
happened to be in Washington this past week, so I went to see the
crowd at Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally on Saturday (8/28).
It’s not often that I’m able to see a large crowd of people who have
been taken-in by jingoistic sloganeering, and it was a rather unsettling
experience for me.

Jingoism is marked by a rabid nationalism and militarism expressed in

an aggressive militaristic foreign policy.

Beck’s call for “supporting our troops” and “restoring honor” to our
great nation is propagandistic patriotic sloganeering at its best.
 Beck’s use of terms such as: God, faith, hope, charity, honor, family, life,
liberty, freedom, and rights are, in Beck’s hands, emptied of their true
meanings and given nationalistic propagandistic meanings.

I hope that Beck’s followers come to understand the true meanings of

the terms Beck uses.

Beck’s 8/28 rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington occurred on

the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington led by the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., where he gave his famous I Have a Dream speech.

Beck endorses Dr. King and what he stood for, and this is Beck’s (and
his handlers’) weak point.

As I’ve said before, I write about Dr. King’s legal-social philosophy

often, because I believe his is the best philosophical basis for legal-social
theory: natural law. And because, as Dr. King noted, this legal theory is
also the philosophical basis of the Declaration of Independence and the
Bill of Rights.

At issue here is: Justice. What is it? And how do we know whether or
not our nation is acting justly?

Does Beck have the answer? Is Beck the man who, like Dr. King, can
lead us our nation on the path of justice? Can Beck tell us how to go about
building a more just society?

I think not. (Nor am I (by far) the only one who thinks he is not.)

If Beck knew what justice was he wouldn’t be supporting the unjust

wars that our troops are fighting; nor would he be supporting Israel and its
unjust treatment of the Palestinian peoples; nor would he be supporting
the unjust War on Terror and the unconstitutional USA PATRIOT Act.

The unjust nature of these is obvious and yet Beck seems oblivious to
these injustices.

Rather than taking a stand for what is right and for what is true, Beck
takes a stand for what is wrong and for what is false: preemptive war,
torture, wiretapping, warrantless searches, suspension of due process for
terror suspects, etc . . .
 The purpose of Beck’s (upcoming) 9/12 rally, so he says, is to help
Americans recapture the feeling of unity we all had immediately after the
terror attacks of 9/11. Personally, I can’t imagine a worse thing for
Americans to do that to put themselves (willingly) right back into the very
terror-induced mindset that, ten years ago, shut down most of our critical
thinking skills, which opened us up to be influenced and manipulated by
the government propagandists. The last thing Americans need is a return
to that non-thinking, duped, reactionary, vindictive, hyper-patriotic,
overemotional mentality.

As for 9/11, Beck has never questioned the official government story.
And yet the terror attacks of 9/11, which were perpetrated by elements of
our own government, were the greatest injustices of our time. Beck talks
about freedom and justice but it was the very injustice of the 9/11 attacks
(which killed nearly 3,000 people) that led to the most drastic reductions
of freedoms that Americans have ever known.

The core concern, I think, of the TEA party folks has been to regain the
people’s ability to regain control over our currently bloated, corrupt, and
unjust federal government. For the most part, the TEA party folks are
ordinary, hardworking Americans who are simply fed up with the feds. I
can relate to this yet I can also relate to the many other injustices within
our society, which Beck considers (= brands) Leftist (e.g., peace, reforming
the drug laws, economic injustices). Beck appeals to these TEA Party folks
because he uses terms they are familiar with (e.g., freedom, socialism, the
Founders, Marxism) and he comes across to them as one who is learned in
the subjects of history and political science yet Beck is simply using these
terms and the concepts they represent as buzzwords in order to create an
intellectually thin jingoistic lens which his followers can use to view (i.e.,
understand and make sense of) the world.

I have my own issues with both the Left and the Right yet Beck seems to
be assured that it is the Left—and only the Left—which is a real threat to
America. This appeals to most Americans because Americans value
individual freedom and liberty above all else. This individual liberty and
freedom stems from our rights, which are inalienable because they come to
us from our Creator. This is outlined in the Declaration of Independence, a
document Dr. King used to hold America’s feet to the fires of our asserted
ideal: that all people are created equally and are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights . . .
 This is something the Left often forgets: that the greatest civil rights
leader of our time—Dr. King—stood on natural law, with eternal moral
standards that created the legal and philosophical foundation of
inalienable civil rights which Dr. King used (so successfully) as a fulcrum
to gain the liberation of his peoples during his oppressed times (i.e., the
American Negros of the 1950’s-60’s).

Dr. King was an intellectual, as well as a man who knew what justice—
and injustice—was. He could recognize an unjust law or situation (like the
Vietnam War and poverty) and organize against it in order to build a more
just society. Glenn Beck, on the contrary, seeks to perpetuate the current
injustices and legitimize the illegitimate within the minds of his followers
in order to build a more unjust society.

One writer has suggested that Beck (and his handlers) has (have)
managed to co-opt the TEA Party by duping its older—less tech savvy—
members, leaving the younger, upstart, Ron Paul, End the Fed, 9/11 truth
revolutionary types out in the cold. I think this is true, but I also think
there is more to it than this. Not all of the TEA Party people at Beck’s rally
were old; many were middle aged or younger. I think these people simply
haven’t bothered to think-through—critically—the issues that are at stake
today. Nor have they bothered to think about what justice is. Sadly, it’s
Beck’s anti-intellectualism, sloganeering, and jingoism that actually
appeals to so many people, which engenders a “My Country Right or
Wrong!” mindset.

Just wrap indefinite detentions and torture in the American flag and
everything’s okay . . .

Beck has ridiculed Ron Paul and his supporters, as well as the 9/11
Truth crowd, yet these people were the founders of the TEA Party
movement—ordinary citizens who could see the injustices of preemptive
wars, torture, eavesdropping, suspension of due process for terrorism
suspects, etc . . .

Mr. Beck sets himself against the very people who know what justice is
while portraying himself as an authentic spokesman for justice. He uses
the skin of the truth (freedom, justice, rights) and stuffs it with lies (don’t
question 9/11, support preemptive wars, support Israel) in order to make it
palatable to his listeners/viewers/followers.
 It doesn’t take an Einstein, however, to see the injustices which America
is guilty of . . . but it does take someone with a heart and a thinking mind;
someone who knows what justice is.

Something Glenn Beck seems oblivious to.