What the Heck, Glen Beck

Glen Beck is a Fox News representative, a popular figure with some Americans. Fox News is managed by Roger Aisles, a former political guru and writer for President Nixon, President Ford, President Reagan, and President George H. W. Bush, all Republicans. Mr. Aisles, Glen Beck’s boss, maintains that Fox News is “fair and balanced”.  Glen Beck is noted, apart from his views, for strange behavior akin to that of a troubled adolescent, or child. Any recollection of the faces he makes, for example, when he denounces his political opponents with no certain logic or reason,  may assist in understanding his Nine Points, and anything else in his mind.
The Nine Principles

1. America is good. 
Americans are good. The country, America, is good as a concept. Some of “its” practices by some of its people get it criticized and condemned (unfairly so, when all of America is lumped in with the last federal administration and with certain monied officials and the like). Beck’s slogan is simplistic to the point of denying actual reality.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life. 
Making God the center of your life causes, or allows, at least two different results.  By making God the center of your life, you may begin to assume you are like God, or even God Himself.  Or you may be absorbed by “God”, or what you presume to be God, or by the influences of God (whom few experts, even, pretend to understand), and ignore others, who may need your understanding or attention right here on terra infirma. For better or worse, Be Yourself! You must know this sometimes, Mr. Beck. You don’t pretend to be anyone else, do you? 

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday. 

This is an indirect admission that you were not honest, yesterday, Mr. Beck. And perhaps other days before that, as well. Can we trust that you will be more honest today, Mr. Beck? Or tomorrow? 

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government. 
And so thought Bonnie and Clyde. And Ma Barker and her sons. And the Martins and the McCoys, who killed on another, respectively. You may get the point, Mr. Beck, if you are honest with, and about, yourself.  No one is above the law, as you say below. And certainly no one is above reasonable law and order. 

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it. 
Justice being blind (to privilege and over-privilege, for example) could be considered a moot point these days. What members of the last administration, and their supporting lobbyists, what corporate and banking con men and con women have been brought to justice recently? If you are a rich, highly connected Republican, do you even, ordinarily, get media attention on any of your “shenanigans”? (By the way, where is the media’s apology to the ruined ex-Congressman Gary Condit, who was in effect convicted of murdering his intern even though her body had not been found? Recently someone was arrested for that crime. For Condit, being a Democrat was enough cause for suspicion, perhaps. At about the same time, Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough’s own beautiful female intern died, and her body was found — in Scarborugh’s office. It was also quickly cremated, after an autopsy, done by a pathologist who had been stripped of his license, concluded there was no determinable cause of death for the healthy 21-year old. The Alabama police had nothing to investigate, (even if they had wanted to investigate). Soon after, Scarborough “left” politics and took a role involving Democrat bashing in the media. (There was no suspicion about him.) He now enjoys a high profile on MSNBC TV. Talk about high up connections, and perhaps getting away with murder. 

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results. 
No challenge to the first part of that statement, Mr. Beck. We’re all Americans. Every last one of us. And there can be no guarantee of equal results, even for equal, or even greater, efforts.  (Some of us are more fortunate, or more skilled, or better connected than others.) However, what you are actually getting at, when you say that there is no guarantee of equality of results, is the suggestion that we  we should not try to produce fair results, either. Your stand against unions is a denial of the natural aspirations of fellow Americans. It demonstrates your favoritism of those who would deny economic justice in order to selfishly maintain their own leveraged existences. While those who value the Bill of Rights and The Constitution of the United States maintain that every American is equal in the eyes of the law, which is sometimes used to try to establish fairness, you maintain a defense of those who are against American progress, or the progress of Americans. 

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable. 
This proposal is simply unworkable. America is, to some degree, a representative democracy.  If all taxpayers got to decide what they wanted their taxes spent on, we’d have more calamity in the economy than we have now. Each individual may have a funding preference, but not all individuals would be thinking of the greatest good for all, in that instance. For better or worse, we elect those who make the big decisions such as what America’s spending priorities are, or should be. Beck seems to be suggesting here that we could live under the anarchy of libertarianism, which — as many do not know — depends on the charity of the wealthy to sustain the services of ordinary civilization. If the majority of the wealthy are proving anything to us these days, it is the fact of their arrogant selfishness. Of course, most people today are aware of your preferences, Mr.Beck. We’d all like to keep all we earn and not pay taxes at all. If your reach the very top, Mr. Beck, your dream will likely come true. 

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion. 
Yes, indeed, Mr. Beck. Most of us are in full agreement with that. Why, therefore, do you and your ilk (such as Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity) so strenuously, so loudly, so theatrically, attempt to discredit the opinions of others who challenge your views?  Do you believe in quiet reason? Can you trust that? 

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
At last — we agree on something, Mr. Beck. Nice thought, the elected government working for us, isn’t it? But who are “we”? The government works for whomever is pushing it. Some people have more push than others.  Note: Where is your Tenth Principle, Mr. Beck? Should there not be Ten ”Principles”? Note: Dale Reynolds, the author of these remarks to Glen Beck’s “Nine Principles”, is an American playwright and screenwriter living in London, England.