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It has been suggested that those who are critics of Beck should be able to refute his arguments with counter facts. Aside from picking out various points and showing that they are false (which would not convince believers in any case), it is not generally possible to show that his arguments are wrong. Why? Because they are based on supposition, fear, interpretation and the tying together of things that are not part of the same phenomena.
Here is a hypothetical example: If I call you on the phone and tell you there are twelve armed men headed down the road to your house and they are going to your front door, you can look outside and see if what I am saying is true. Or, you can wait and see who shows up based on my assurances that they will be there within a certain time. If I prove to be an alarmist and wrong, then you might never take another call from me.
If, on the other hand, I call you and say, in the dark of night, that there are twelve armed men scattered in the 40 acre woods all around your house, what are you to do? Suppose you have another friend who has always been careful about what he says and always concerned for your well being. You call that friend and say, “Can you prove to me that there aren’t twelve armed men scattered in the woods around my house?”. The friend says no. Does that mean you conclude that the first call was correct? No, the second call proves nothing except the difficulty of finding twelve armed men in the dark, scattered around forty acres of land.
How can anyone prove that Woodrow Wilson was not part of some vague, internationalist conspiracy to take away individual rights? You can’t. The belief that he was, however bizarre, is a supposition based interpretation of other’s writings, some of which could be true, some of which could be false.
There is an underlying, unspoken problem that makes such conspiracy theories worth considering, if barely: bad ideas are difficult to get out of society. Marxism and Nazism, to name just two, are ideas that should have died natural deaths decades ago, yet they remain forces in the world. The fact that these horrid ideas were put into circulation, however, does not mean that they are the potent threats they once were.
While it is difficult to rid ourselves of a lot of really bad ideas, we are capable of refining and redefining ideas and concepts as time goes along. A bad idea, used in a limited way, might be turned into a good one with the passage of time and the richness of human experience. I would argue, for example, that the women’s movement of the 1970s and ‘80s had many bad, unfortunate ideas at its center, but the results for our society have largely been beneficial. In other words, we, as a society, take corrective action to weed out the worst ideas as we move forward. Some people still believe the bad ideas, but most don’t.
Beckism is based on the idea that all of the worst ideas remain and are a central part of the belief system of people 90 and a 100 years later. All these bad ideas somehow gather themselves into the heads of the evil left thinkers as they try to destroy America. And, you have to also believe that it all marches forward like an organized column of tanks into battle, with no one in disagreement or challenging the beliefs.
There are a lot of dumb, ridiculous ideas floating around in people’s brains. They aren’t a threat to me, or anyone, because they are just thoughts. Some of those ideas might, in fact, have been inspired by intellectuals and writers who didn’t have the interest of our nation at heart. So what? Most of the time, we automatically weed out extreme ideas and those policies that are put in place come from our collective wisdom and careful judgment. Bad ideas most often do the greatest harm in the hands of the powerful.
If you like Glen Beck and watch or listen to him, my suggestion would be don’t swallow it whole. He is first of all an intention propagandist rather than a seeker of truth. Listen carefully to what you are hearing and see it if it makes sense. Is there some internal logic that fits together? Does he throw out a point and then say, “I’m just saying....” to take back the point? Does he say, “I’m no expert in this”, and then try to sound like he is an expert? Is he making points that simply cannot be tested or verified by anything other than his grand conspiracy theories? If so, what is his value?
Beck wants you to believe there are twelve armed men out the woods, waiting for the moment they can come into your house. He wants to give you a reason, many reasons, actually, to believe that matters have turned for the worse in our nation because people, working in concert with politicians, have pushed and pushed for the wrong ideas and those people are somehow tied together in a vast network of evil. The notion of spreading fear works well on Fox News, because the channel jumps on any violent incident around the country, large or small, to play up the idea of the nation at risk at all times. Fox News runs on the idea of spreading fear.
Beck wants, more than anything else, to convince you that their motivations, at the start, are wrong and contrary to our fundamental, national principles. This is directly in conflict with our American traditions of accepting one another and believing that others are acting in goodwill (if not, necessarily in the right way). At the end of this line, we cease to be a nation who can trust and work together and become one of mutual contempt and ultimate hatred.
Doug Terry, 3.25.11
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