I am really tired of libertarians who are unable to understand that the world isn't black and white. This article is an example of that thinking. Beck isn't 100% bad; he isn't 100% good. Is he secretly trying to stop folks from seeing the libertarian light, and is therefore more dangerous than an in-your-face statist like Hannity? No. Does he omit information that might be more enlightening? Sure. Is the reason for omitting such information a well-designed propaganda operation? No. That type of thinking is just silly.

I've listened to Beck on radio before he even showed up on TV on CNN Headline News. He was initially a lock-step Republican. He's been educating himself and slowly moving toward libertarian thinking - yes, he's still a supporter of our war in the middle east, but he recently announced that he no longer supports the Patriot Act. Another example is that he was initially in favor of TARP, but later changed his position to being against TARP. Baby steps. He calls himself libertarian on occasion - he needs to be corrected about that, but in general he's a whole lot closer to us than any other talking head on TV today.

If I had a choice of two hours of Sean Hannity (as close to 100% bad as exists), or one hour of Hannity and one hour of Beck per day on Fox, I'll take the latter.

FWIW, IMO the two most honest talking heads on TV today are Rachel Maddow and Glenn Beck. I don't trust either, but I get some truth from each of them.

Eat your Wheaties Don, it's not ending anytime soon. You are sick of purists telling you to be pure, purists are sick of you telling them to compromise for the sake of "unity". But let me ask you this: as you suggest Beck is stepping along the stones one at a time, what or whom got Beck started down this path? The centrists? The moderates?

And where is his next step without the purists? The neocons? The GOP establishment? Not much of an alternative there. About as much alternative as Beck and Hannity. FoxNews or......FoxNews. Instead of encouraging people to choose between Coke and Pepsi, how about offering them a nice drink of pure water?

Excuse me Don, but this is the same jack ass that said Debra Medina hated America. Hates America....seriously???? This is the same man that calls Ron Paulers, birthers, and 9/11 truthers Terrorists and that they are going to kill the president...WTF

Glenn Beck is a goof ball with his stupid chalkboard for 5 year olds.. The time for compromise is OVER.  

Thanks for posting this Ed, very good information. 

4409 and Oyate -

Get your facts straight. You're hearing about Beck through your extremist filters. Go watch his show for a few weeks and come back with original criticism.

Beck asked Medina directly if she was a 911 truther. She absolutely evaded answering, probably to not offend anyone. Check out the entire story here -

http://military.rightpundits.com/2010/02/12/debra-medina-glenn-beck-slams-texas-governor-candidate-on-9-11-conspiracy-video/

And no I'm not sick of purists, I'm just tired of them believing that the world only exists in black and white. That's simply not the way the world works.

Purists - fine, do not watch or listen to Glenn Beck because he's part of some grand conspiracy. The only result will that you'll go to your grave not having a clue what's going on in the minds of millions of Americans who might possibly be educated to the goodness of libertarianism (pure or impure) and therefore might be convinced to stop electing scumbags to office who are destroying your freedom.

Don, we've seen "libertarian light" already. It's called the GOP. We've seen where compromise gets the American people. It gets them right where we are today.

We've seen that to embrace conservative fundamentals BUT accept the military-industrial complex is simply to treat the symptoms and not the disease.

Otherwise all you have is a temporary rollback of certain egregious usurpations of the state while tyranny rolls ever forward.

There are some who will spend the rest of their lives applying bandaids to the dying oligarch. There are some who wait anxiously for his demise. There are some willing to help him along his path.

Now tell me before we move merrily along: which shade of grey is John McCain? Which shade of grey is Rudy Giulliani? Which shade of grey is Newt Gingrich? How about Ollie North the neocon drug/gun runner? 

Which shade of grey is the war in Iraq? Which shade of grey is the war in Afghanistan? How many millions killed or injured or displaced and what shade of grey?

Final word: we're not letting Greenspan off the hook just because he banged Ayn Rand either.

There isn't a whole lot of difference between Hannity, McCain, Giuliani, North and Newt. So? None of them claim to be libertarian. Beck really upsets folks because he's not easy to categorize, and he occasionally claims to be libertarian. As does Wayne Allen Root. So are they equivalent to the Hannity/McCain/Giuliani bunch? Not at all. They are somewhere between Ernie and the bad guys on the good/bad scale. But are they BAD guys? You and Ernie obviously think so. I don't. Yes I wish both were anti-imperialism. Is that the litmus test for libertarianism? How about legalizing heroin? Or abolishing all taxation? Where is that single line in your value judgement scale which has the label BAD on one side and GOOD on the other? Where does Rand Paul fall on your scale? How about Peter Schiff? Jesse Ventura? Gary Johnson? It's not black and white!

When you reject all but those who are lock step with your beliefs, you get a pure population. But it will be really, really small.

Good for Greenspan! I knew he was buddies with Rand, I just didn't know how good.

I'm taking donations to buy a parrot. I will teach this parrot to say hilarious things about Benedict Beck. Then I will mail this parrot to Beck. I can't think of a better idea, this would be... amazing.

Mail? Like U.S. Mail? Poor parrot will starve.

Not US mail, I'll do it correctly. Some courrier service or something. This is sounding better all of the time.

I can add this little bit, if you please. I began listening to Glenn Beck a couple of years before he took to doing TV. The shop where I worked was equipped with a radio which would only pick up one station, and the afternoons at work were marked with three hours of Glenn Beck, whether I liked it or not. After a while, I took an interest in Mr. Beck's message, and I found that he was much more bold than other talk show hosts. Great sense of humor with his Moron Trivia feature. Easy to like the guy. 

But one day he mentioned Carroll Quigley, and that really pinged me, as I have long been a student of the heirs of something called the Rhodes Round Table groups, which were born in London, England, more than a Century ago. Founder was Cecil Rhodes, the Rothschild agent who created the De Beers diamond syndicate for the Rothschild banking family and also consolidated the South African gold mines for the Rothschilds. They had a country named for him in Africa - Rhodesia.  The secret society which Rhodes formed beginning in 1891 is at the roots of the Council on Foreign Relations (1921), was influential in the Woodrow Wilson Administration as they introduced the Federal Reserve System, Inc. and the questionable 16th Amendment creating a Federal income tax with which to guarantee interest payments to the Fed for creating and absorbing this nation's debt while at the same time issuing our monetary system through policy-setting powers granted the Fed under Wilson. Long story short, Glenn Beck in a two year span mentioned Quigley, a known and self-confessed Rhodes Scholar and advocate of the one-world government conspiracy, as well as being an honored and praised Professor at Georgetown University, four times, the dates of said mentioning being written down here.

Why am I talking about Beck's mentioning of Carroll Quigley? It has to do with another writer whom Beck praises grandly and often, the author of "The Five Thousand Year Leap", a man I deeply admire and respect, W. Cleon Skousen. You see, Skousen wrote more books than the "Leap" book. And one of his books is entitled "The Naked Capitalist". That book by Skousen is itself an in-depth expose of the conspiracy revealed by Quigley in his tome, Tragedy And Hope. Skousen masterfully reveals the communist role in the one-world government efforts of the Rhodes Round Table groups and subsequent globalist groups which have now largely replaced or altered the Round Table.  But Skousen also used Quigley's book to show that monopoly-capitalists with ties inside our Federal government have facilitated the incremental dismantling of America from within using Wall Street connections and Federal connections. Skousen's "Five Thousand Year Leap" is highly palatable for those disgruntled Republicans who stampeded out of the Republican Party under Bush-43, and is great propaganda for the Glenn Beck listening audience, which is still rubbing the "sleep" out of their awakening eyes. But I've never heard Beck mention Skousen's "Naked Capitalist" book, and the one and only reason why Mr. Beck refuses to tell his listeners about that little bombshell of a book is simple and in harmony with this article's premise - Mr. Beck dare not reach for the whole truth regarding the conspiracy theory we know as the "new world order's one-world government and the tactics the elite "players" use to effect that government despite all which our Constitution denies such a thing. Quigley gives it to you straight from the horse's mouth, and Skousen walks you through Quigley's screed masterfully, perhaps even more nicely than when he wrote "Leap". The Naked Capitalist is Skousen's report on Quigley and the conspiracy, and once anyone reads both "Leap" and "Naked Capitalist", one knows that the conspiracy is real, is present, is clearly a threat to this nation's sovereignty, and is almost in full control over our cultural and social and economic and political and epistemological infrastructure - and is using the Federal government's assets against the American people while promoting the takeover of an international governing body which already boasts a World Court, a World Trade Organization, a World Bank (and IMF), a World Peace Keeping Force, and which, at Pittsburg recently declared the need for a World Currency.

Glenn Beck knows everything I've just mentioned, and refuses to lead his flock to the knowledge which his favorite writer, Skousen himself, has pointed us to. The fact that Beck has mentioned Quigley and Skousen repeatedly but has not (any time I chanced to be listening, that is) connected the dots so as to include recommending to his listeners that they read The Naked Capitalist by Skousen merely makes the point for this article above, and suggests that Beck is misleading by not taking his audience as far as he knows the truth itself demands. Beck may have another motive for not revealing all he knows, such as a fear of losing his venue, but without going into further reflections from me about Beck's role in other matters, I'll just say that it looks very suspicious to me that Beck is denying the 9/11 Truth movement the way he does, especially in light of the fact that he's familiar with Quigley's work. I have never talked with Beck, so I cannot say with certainty that he knows about The Naked Capitalist by Skousen, but since Beck is affiliated with the Skousen family I must presume that he has at least known that the book exists. If I'm wrong, I'll stand corrected by Mr. Beck. If I'm right, Beck is certainly misleading a very large portion of the politically aware population across America.

 Thanks for the article and thanks for the venue.

Salute!

Elias Alias

Don you said I'm "Hearing about Beck through your extremist filters" hahahaha

When you say extremist are you talking about CNN and Fox because that's where I seen that shit. I know a war mongering neo-tard when I see one and that is Glenn Beck.

You said "Beck occasionally claims to be libertarian"? How do you occasionally be a libertarian? What is he the other times? Either you believe in the principles or not. So is he occasionally Mormon as well? He is just another lying Politician  

Beck is NOT a libertarian...

1. He supported the bailout and don't bring up this bullshit that he is against it now because it will sound like a John Kerry moment.

2. He supports the fraud war on terror and believes some camel riding dip shits in caves orchestrated 9/11.

He is a complete fraud and you want to continue your 5th grade education with him and his chalkboard have at it.

I'm sorry Don but you can't be a libertarian and support dropping bombs using unmanned drones on innocent people 6000 miles from home. Its pathetic.

You are NOT a libertarian, you are what I like to call a Neo-liberal!

The was the biggest pile of drivel I have ever tried to wade through.  Reasoning was convoluted and painfully drawn out.

 Obots  and Becktards   ...they  are  all the  same

When a "discussion" degenerates to name calling, it exposes that the name callers as devoid of any actual facts to make a rational argument. And you guys think the W.A.R is the reason for the libertarian movement's decline? Nope. He's just a symptom. Look in the mirror and you will see the real reason that Libertarian Party is irrelevant in today's politics.

Elias Alias does bring facts to the discussion. However, his conclusion as to Beck's motive for not mentioning "The Naked Capitalist" is pure speculation. FWIW, I can't recall Beck ever mentioning anything about Quigley on TV on either CNNHN or Fox.

Everything written about Glenn Beck in this post is correct, except for the parts about Glenn Beck. Best wishes as you wander through the wilderness. 

Devolution is my favorite part! The joyous name-calling and libel, it's our signature style. 

If you aren't offending at least 5 other patriots a day you aren't committed. Get with it Don!

And that goes double for the rest of you frisky-fingered Catholics and you prissy Presbyterians and you subhuman Muslims and sociopathic Jews; you man-eating Mormons and jealous Jehovah's Whitlessness (yer daddy never bought you nothing for Christmas and he never weeeeeel) you assorted other simpering spiritualists, you acid-dropping atheists, insuffrable purists and whore-sellout centrists and closet collectivists. Ye sons of demons and daughters of the devil all.

If I've left anyone out please don't take it as an insult. But that right there, son, that's how it's done.

Touche!

Don, I will take your silence as acceptance.

For some time I've felt we are being corralled to Fox-Beck. It is time to think for ourselves. We need our Micheal Collins!