Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Yipeee!!! Glenn Beck Is A Libertarian

It seems that Commentary Magazine is not happy about Glenn Beck being a libertarian.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Beck. In the past I assumed he was a typical figure in the pundit and cable-media world. Only recently have I watched portions of his television program, as well as interviews with him, and heard parts of his radio program. And what I’ve seen should worry the conservative movement.

I say that because he seems to be more of a populist and libertarian than a conservative,...
I admit he is not exactly my type of libertarian. Still. The libertarians are an underrepresented group in American discourse. You know the "leave us alone people". Nice to see him garnering such large ratings on Fox.

I do think the conservative movement should be worried. Especially if they are being represented by groups such as the Values Voters coalition.

4 comments:

Diogenes said...

Coulda predicted it. He's from Seattle you know. Much about political affiliation can be easily derived by geography. The Northeast and Northwest are reliably liberal. Ordinarily the best you can hope for out of these bastions of Liberalism are Fiscal conservatives. There is just too much Liberal influence to grow Social conservatism in the big cities. Anyone can understand numbers, (economics) but the math is much more complicated regarding social costs vs benefits.

In any case, Glenn Beck is great, but he put his foot in his mouth recently when he said that John McCain would have been worse than Barack Obama. Even though I think I understand his point, that was an incredibly stupid thing to say.

Unknown said...

Hi Dio,

You may want to read up on the difference between Liberals and Libertarians. There is not a great overlap between these groups, and they can be seen as tri-polar opposites, with Conservatives as the third pole.

-S

Diogenes said...

They are as you say polar opposites, but in the area of Hedonism, they tend to agree. (at least in practice, if not in theory)

M. Simon said...

There are three main political threads in America -

Socially and fiscally liberal.
Socially and fiscally conservative.
Socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

Beck is in the socially liberal and fiscally conservative group. Those are the "leave us alone coalition".

What the "conservatives don't get is that you can't get small government from a government that wants to control social behavior. That is concerned with private morality. You need secret police to make that work.

Just as the drug war requires snitches, undercover cops, etc. And of course with that you get corruption - things like "have sex with me and I won't bring you up on drug charges" are not unknown.

I always like this which some of my socially conservative friends hate.

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." - Ronald Reagan