Glenn Beck Relaunching The Blaze As Global Libertarian News Network

[CaptUSA]

No such thing. Liberty is a package deal.

Easy now, let's not be so self-limiting. Most of the people in here do not fully understand the concepts of liberty. The closer people come to liberty, the better, from my point of view. The more people don't want to steal my stuff or force me to do things against my will, the better.

I'm willing to work with them on things we agree about, and try to persuade them on the things we still disagree about. Each person takes their own path to understanding liberty. Just because Beck and his followers haven't made the complete journey yet, doesn't mean they can't be helpful.

 

[Romulus]

My brother is a neocon of sorts, and a Beck fan.... he has come around a lot to liberty... much work to do, but some Beck fans can be low hanging fruit.... instead of trying to convert liberals which are just plain fruit.

 

[Romulus]

There are some youtube of Breitbart dropping a bombshell about Beck... that is pretty telling.

 

[Lucille]

He's trying to co-opt Libertarians like he did the Tea Party!

Like the progs usurped and bastardized "liberal," Beck will do the same to "libertarian."

 

[AGRP]

Easy now, let's not be so self-limiting. Most of the people in here do not fully understand the concepts of liberty. The closer people come to liberty, the better, from my point of view. The more people don't want to steal my stuff or force me to do things against my will, the better.

I'm willing to work with them on things we agree about, and try to persuade them on the things we still disagree about. Each person takes their own path to understanding liberty. Just because Beck and his followers haven't made the complete journey yet, doesn't mean they can't be helpful.

Never stated they cant be worked with. Just that its impossible to be a conservative-libertarian unless youre simply describing your personal values which is something that actors like Beck dont do.

 

[Cap]

Changing the meaning of Libertarian, remember “He who controls the language controls the argument”. This is a classic chess move by the establishment.

 

[Confederate]

 

[cajuncocoa]

Penn Jillette is probably further away from Glenn than Ron is and he still wants him for his network.

Sure, but Beck hasn't spent the better part of his career insulting Penn. It's different.

 

[cajuncocoa]

stealing this.

 

[misterx]

You people are so stubborn you would cut off your nose to spite your face. It only advances your cause to have someone making shows that expose the nsa and united nations, but because he fails your purity test you'd rather people not get exposed to any of this information. Like it's really better for people to watch msnbc and current tv instead. Yeah, that will make them so much easier to convert to "true libertarians". We don't need beck getting people to start questioning their government. Sometimes I wonder whose side you people are really on. You seem dead set on keeping the movement toiling in obscurity. Remember that marxists didn'tt ake Oliver this country by promoting strict marxism to the mainstream. They did it piecemeal by chipping away at the orthodoxy bit by bit until people came to accept every facet of marxism without knowing it. God forbid we support anyone who successfully chips away at the prevailing marxist orthodoxy of today.

 

[sailingaway]

Changing the meaning of Libertarian, remember “He who controls the language controls the argument”. This is a classic chess move by the establishment.

but 'libertarian' isn't the prize, the principles are.

 

[sailingaway]

You people are so stubborn you would cut off your nose to spite your face. It only advances your cause to have someone making shows that expose the nsa and united nations, but because he fails your purity test you'd rather people not get exposed to any of this information. Like it's really better for people to watch msnbc and current tv instead. Yeah, that will make them so much easier to convert to "true libertarians". We don't need beck getting people to start questioning their government. Sometimes I wonder whose side you people are really on. You seem dead set on keeping the movement toiling in obscurity. Remember that marxists didn'tt ake Oliver this country by promoting strict marxism to the mainstream. They did it piecemeal by chipping away at the orthodoxy bit by bit until people came to accept every facet of marxism without knowing it. God forbid we support anyone who successfully chips away at the prevailing marxist orthodoxy of today.

No, he coopts then at the key moment torpedoes people after he has portrayed himself as an expert on what he coopts. We've seen it. It has nothing (well, not much) to do with purity.

 

[bunklocoempire]

You people are so stubborn you would cut off your nose to spite your face. It only advances your cause to have someone making shows that expose the nsa and united nations, but because he fails your purity test you'd rather people not get exposed to any of this information. Like it's really better for people to watch msnbc and current tv instead. Yeah, that will make them so much easier to convert to "true libertarians". We don't need beck getting people to start questioning their government. Sometimes I wonder whose side you people are really on. You seem dead set on keeping the movement toiling in obscurity. Remember that marxists didn'tt ake Oliver this country by promoting strict marxism to the mainstream. They did it piecemeal by chipping away at the orthodoxy bit by bit until people came to accept every facet of marxism without knowing it. God forbid we support anyone who successfully chips away at the prevailing marxist orthodoxy of today.

Not a "purity test" with me friend, simply the danger of consistently mixing half-truths (whole lies) in with truth.

Paul has warned of this.

When a bastardized system breaks down, and you believe in the un-bastardized version of that system, the wise thing to do is figure out and tell people how the system was bastardized in the first place -not simply cloud things up by going after the critics of the bastardized system.

That goes for everything from monetary policy to foreign intervention and all things in between.

 

[dinosaur]

You people are so stubborn you would cut off your nose to spite your face. It only advances your cause to have someone making shows that expose the nsa and united nations, but because he fails your purity test you'd rather people not get exposed to any of this information. Like it's really better for people to watch msnbc and current tv instead. Yeah, that will make them so much easier to convert to "true libertarians". We don't need beck getting people to start questioning their government. Sometimes I wonder whose side you people are really on. You seem dead set on keeping the movement toiling in obscurity. Remember that marxists didn'tt ake Oliver this country by promoting strict marxism to the mainstream. They did it piecemeal by chipping away at the orthodoxy bit by bit until people came to accept every facet of marxism without knowing it. God forbid we support anyone who successfully chips away at the prevailing marxist orthodoxy of today.

Your point is good. And many people that these types wake up do stop trusting them and join us. BUT, Beck is incredibly successful at herding cats. He earns his paycheck.

Yes its good that more people get exposed to ideas, but let's just hope that Beck is a little less sucessful than he has been at getting people who are libertarian leaning conservatives, and who are fed up with our Washington masters, to tow the line. Beck does expose new people to some of our ideas, but mostly, so far, he exposes people who are already sympathetic to our ideas to subtle, effective propaganda.

When Beck attracted his audience, he sounded more like one of us. He could eloquently lay out the reasons that the Iraq war was a bad idea, and why our support of fake Bush-type conservatives was a bad idea. He took a bunch of people who were attracted to this message and got them to support both Romney and the impending Iran war.

Of course educating people sometimes backfires on controlled opposition, but not often enough. Because they always end up with a net gain in numbers. Maybe it will be different this time, though. I hope so.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

To be fair to Beck, there has always been plenty of Israel-centric libertarians and objectivists.

Case in point:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?400839-RPF-s-public-enemy-1-slams-us-yet-again...

 

[american.swan]

Oh. I should have seen it before. Why, of course. Now it all makes sense.

Why is the blaze going global? Naturally because liberty is becoming a global "problem".

 

[GunnyFreedom]

What's interesting is the attempt to pander itself reveals an ignorance about how liberty people think. When he pulls the last minute switcheroo, the only people he moves are the ones we never really had. The more he cries wolf, they awaken to his game. It's becoming obvious that Ron Paul dominates the future. I think Beck wants to be relevant dissent in the coming new political order.

Beck is for Beck. He's not in it for America, or to stop liberty, he's in it for the cash. Most people know that by now, even fans of his. To me it's a sign that he predicts Paulers win the future and he wants to be relevant, so that he keeps making money.

So I just give him a jaundiced eye and move on. If someone wants to know I'll explain Debra Medina, and describe the common pattern. Mostly I think he is a clown.

 

[A Son of Liberty]

Dupe

 

[A Son of Liberty]

 

[cajuncocoa]

Glenn Beck Attempts a Laughable Make Over as a Libertarian

by John Avlon Jan 12, 2013 4:45 AM EST

With a straight face, the king of ranting is cynically trying to recast himself as a sensible libertarian. John Avlon isn’t buying it.

It took me a few days to stop laughing.

Glenn Beck is rebranding himself as–get this–the alternative to “far-right, far-left” polarized debates on cable news, dominated by people “yelling at each-other.”

[SUB]Beck speaks to Tea Party supporters in Texas last summer. (Joan Barnett Lee/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT, via Getty)[/SUB]

“We're not going to play in that crazy space as a network," he announced earnestly.

The irony meter just died. Hypocrisy and chutzpah had a child.

This is, after all, the man who rode to riches by screaming louder and crazier than anyone else in the collective conservative nervous breakdown known as Obama Derangement Syndrome circa 2009 and 2010. Here are just a few of his unhinged greatest hits, lest we forget:

• “There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America … done through the guise of an election.”
• “They’re marching us to a non-violent fascism. Or to put it another way, they’re marching us to 1984. Big Brother. Like it or not, fascism is on the rise.”
• “The president is a Marxist ... who is setting up a class system.”
• “The health care bill is reparations. It’s the beginning of reparations.”
• “We are a country that is headed towards socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination.”
• “The government is a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state”

Glenn Beck used his 15 minutes of fame to cast himself as King of the Wingnuts, eventually becoming too extreme for even Roger Ailes to put up with on FoxNews.

But Glenn Beck can read the tea leaves and the ratings. He can see that Sean Hannity’s viewers are tanking post-election. Rush Limbaugh’s audience is aging out of existence and advertisers are looking elsewhere. And so the man who once described himself as a “Rodeo Clown” decided it was time for a new disguise.

So in this announcement, Beck positioned himself beside Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews on side-by-side television monitors, and declared “I consider myself a libertarian ... I'm a lot closer to Penn Jillette than I am to Chuck Hagel."

A tell-tale sign that this is just the latest con job is using Chuck Hagel as a symbol for the far-right (clearly he’s not, because conservatives are trying to scuttle his nomination to be secretary of Defense by President Obama) and Chris Matthews as a symbol for screamers on the left, when he’s at most an enthusiastic Democrat with a sense of reverence for political history. Talk about false equivalency.

At his core Beck is closer to Father Coughlin than Ron Paul, let alone his hero Orson Welles.

​

But Beck sees a space open as a libertarian in the center of the political spectrum, trying to appeal to the independent voters who make up a plurality of the electorate. That space exists. But Glenn Beck is the wrong messenger. It’s too late.

Back in 2000, when he first launched his syndicated radio show in Tampa, he described his politics by saying, “I don’t really consider myself a conservative. I know I don’t consider myself a liberal,” he said. “I have a brain and I like to use it sometimes.” It was a smart pitch, one he more or less continued during his brief Bush-era stint at HLN, when he was billed as an independent.

But when he got his big payday and highest perch to date on FoxNews, he made a strategic decision to go the full crazy. A talented broadcaster, he decided to use fear and hate to pump up his ratings. It worked for a while. But it’s a civic sin that can’t be undone. Forgiveness is for faith. In political debates there is always the videotape.

In some ways, this new guise is clarifying because it definitively answers a lingering question about Beck–is he sincere in his beliefs or was his right-wing rhetoric just showmanship, part of a business plan to appeal to an agitated audience?

It was all just an opportunistic con job. And the dupes are the folks who bought into the shtick, carrying signs at Tea Party rallies that read “Glenn Beck is my hero.”

Real libertarians look at Beck’s latest attempted incarnation with a mixture of disgust and annoyance. They don’t want this rodeo clown anywhere near their bandwagon.

“Beck correctly identifies a libertarian moment,” explains Owen Brennan, who is a partner at Madison McQueen LLC, an ad agency that works almost exclusively with free market and libertarian groups. “As the size and scope of government grows, it’s no coincidence the popularity of our lawmakers is below that of root canals, cockroaches, and lice.”

“But the Beck brand is incongruent with many libertarians. Strong brands don’t tell people who they are, they show them through action,” continues Brennan. “And plenty of freedom fighters who went to the Beck Restoring Honor event in Washington, D.C. expected tar and feathering but got a revival meeting instead.”

Beck’s revival meeting on the Washington Mall was one of many attempted reinventions we’ve seen from the one time Top 40 radio shock jock, putting him on pace to compete with Madonna or Bowie for discarding different phases of his career. And while his entrepreneurial experiment with The Blaze has proven financially successful, thanks in part to talented players like Will Cain, at his core Beck is closer to Father Coughlin than Ron Paul, let alone his hero Orson Welles.

Demagogues always do well in economic downturns, and Beck’s us-against-them exhortations and apocalyptic intimations had their moment. But the man who predicts the end of the world loses credibility, especially among his followers, when the sun rises after the appointed day.

Maybe Glenn Beck has belatedly discovered that his own brand of bile is the problem in our political discourse–or maybe he’s just realized that unhinged hate doesn’t sell as well as it used to. Either way, his aspiration to be an independent, sane and substantive voice in political doesn’t even begin to pass the laugh test. Instead, it’s just the latest reminder of what Eric Hoffer once said: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

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John Avlon is senior columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and the anchor of Beast TV. He is a CNN contributor regularly appearing on the show Erin Burnett Out Front at 7 p.m. EST. He won the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ award for best online column in 2012.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/12/glenn-beck-attempts-a-laughable-make-over-as-a-libertarian.html