To this list we can add The Constitutional Coalition's 2010 conference entitled "What Makes America Work? Lessons Children and Others MUST hear" which features everyone from Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum to Phyllis Schlafly and Joseph Farah and will be highlighted by "An Evening With Glenn Beck."
Just check out some of these speakers and topics:
- SENATOR RICK SANTORUM and KEN FERGUSON How to rid your TV of ALL Sexual programs and advertisements
- MICHAEL MEDVED, Lies About America that Must Stop
- PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY Child Abuse in the Classroom
- DAVID HOROWITZ Teaching Revolution on College Campus
- FRANK GAFNEY It is a Dangerous World – America Under Attack
- AN EVENING WITH GLENN BECK
- CONGRESSWOMAN MICHELE BACHMANN Fundamentals of a Good Education That will keep us Free and Strong
- DR. JERRY NEWCOMBE ENDOWED BY OUR CREATOR: The Role of God in America
- SENATOR RICK SANTORUM CREATED LIFE: The Declaration, Life and Liberty
- JOSEPH FARAH FREE IDEAS: America’s Unique Freedom of the Press
- SENATOR JIM TALENT SECURITY: The Constitutional and Moral Underpinnings of National Defense
It was just over a year ago when Focus on the Family yanked a small interview with Glenn Beck off of its website amid complaints that Focus never mentioned that Beck is Mormon and that "Mormonism is a cult."
Last year, the Conservative Political Action Conference closed with a speech from Rush Limbaugh. This year, according to CPAC director Lisa De Pasquale, it will close with a speech from Glenn Beck–who really became a national leader of some importance last year, if you talk to Tea Party activists.
On Thursday, I want you to join me for a special show, an hour-long special on the swine flu. I am not going to give you my opinion on the swine flu, I don't think anybody but your doctor should give their opinion on the swine flu. This is for every American to ask themselves, "Am I going to give this injection to my children?"
We're going to have a half-hour of those who say "Absolutely not" -- medical doctors. And then the second-half is "Are you crazy? You must."
You decide. That'll be a special hour Thursday. Honest questions, I don't think are going to be asked or answered anyplace else.
There are many unanswered questions about the tragic hanging death of Bill Sparkman, a US Census Bureau employee, in rural Kentucky. But one thing is clear. Right-Wing leaders like Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and media outlets like Fox News have whipped up hysteria and paranoia over the 2010 Census.
Mr. Sparkman's untimely demise may or may not have been the doing of an anti-government fanatic, but it’s clear that the Right is creating an environment that is hostile to Census workers and the Constitutionally-mandated Census.
A steady stream of conspiracy talk by Beck, Bachmann, and others on Fox News has legitimized and propelled conspiracy theories among many everyday Americans who are now terrified of their own government. Talk of rounding up dissidents into concentration camps and nefarious plots by ACORN to steal Congress has fed anti-government sentiment, which could boil over at any moment.
This should be an important wake-up call to those national outlets that have employed fear in pursuit of ratings.
Here is a video compilation of recent Fox News coverage of the 2010 Census -- featuring Beck and Bachmann among others -- along with three amateur YouTube videos created by Americans who fear the Census:
So what is the next big right-wing story going to be, now that Van Jones is gone and President Obama's "indoctrination" of students turned out to be nothing?
Well, Glenn Beck is promising a huge story this week that will send people to jail (skip ahead to the 2:30 mark):
By the end of the week, you will see that something that everybody feels in their gut is wrong, but nobody has really exposed it, is going to be exposed this week and you will see, by the end of the week, that people will go to jail. What's happening in this country right now, I've said this for a while, I believe is one of the most important stories in American history. You're going to see the beginning of it and people will go to jail.
I'll be the first to admit that after nearly a decade of wallowing in the swamp of right-wing political insanity, my sense of what constitutes "acceptable" rhetoric is entirely skewed, so much so that when I see things like these sorts of absurd assertions from the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission that health care reform would lead to a Nazi-like elimination of the elderly, I barely even bat an eye any more:
This is nothing less than state sponsored euthanasia. Hitler began his reign of terror by his application of the brutal, Darwinian ethic, “survival of the fittest.” He started killing the disabled and infirmed because they were considered to be a burden on the state.
Hitler rationalized the killing of innocent people in an effort to advance his fascist, national socialist agenda. In the name of doing what’s best for the good of society, Hitler trivialized human life. Ultimately millions ended up paying with their lives.
In the name of the public good, Obama and the Congress are on the same anti-Christian, pro-death path.
And the reason I don't even blink stems largely from the fact that this type of rhetoric is, in fact, perfectly acceptable to the Right - here's Rush Limbaugh yesterday:
They accuse of us being Nazis, and Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook. Now, what are the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany? Well, the Nazis were against big business -- they hated big business. And of course we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working, one of which was the Autobahn. They were against cruelty and vivisection of animals, but in the radical sense of devaluing human life, they banned smoking. They were totally against that. They were for abortion and euthanasia of the undesirables, as we all know, and they were for cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare.
This is why I have always bristled when I hear people claim conservativism gets close to Nazism. It is liberalism that's the closest you can get to Nazism and socialism. It's all bundled up under the socialist banner. There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy that's being heralded like a Hitler-like logo.
As Glenn Greewald reminds us, just a few years ago when someone submitted an ad to MoveOn.org that compared President Bush to Hitler, MoveOn immediately removed the ad, everyone went completely insane. But now you have Limbaugh, the most influential voice of the Right in the entire country, literally comparing the Democrats to the Nazis and nobody says anything because this type of rhetoric is some utterly common that it is not even considered newsworthy.
I wonder what it would be like, seriously. I mean, if I could go, you know, to the speaker's shindig, wouldn't that be great? What would it -- oh, look, here she -- oh, she is -- wow -- you're so much prettier and flatter and shinier in the face than I expected. It's almost like you're two people at once.
So, Speaker Pelosi, I just wanted to -- you gonna drink your wine? Are you blind? Do those eyes not work? There you -- I want you to drink it now. Drink it. Drink it. Drink it.
I really just wanted to thank you for having me over here to wine country. You know, to be invited, I thought I had to be a major Democratic donor or a longtime friend of yours, which I'm not.
By the way, I put poison in your -- no, I -- I look forward to all the policy discussions that we're supposed to have -- you know, on health care, energy reform, and the economy.
Hey, is that Sean Penn over there? I know it cost me more than $30,000 to get in here, but hey. Hey, I think I see Ed Markey, the author of cap and trade, right over there.
Like I said, my own sense of what sort of rhetoric is "acceptable" from the Right is admittedly skewed , so much so that, quite frequently, I don't even bother posting certifiably crazy things precisely because they are so common as to not even warrant the coverage.
But even by my warped standard, this type of stuff from Limbaugh and Beck is completely insane.
And yet, at the same time, it is also perfectly acceptable.
Over the weekend, Dave Neiwert posted video of Glenn Beck and Sandy Rios discussing hate crimes legislation, with Beck seemingly not understanding the need for it because he wouldn’t personally beat up a man in a dress … or something – it’s almost impossible to figure out Beck’s point (which, I suspect, stems for the fact that Beck is clearly losing him mind.)
But while Beck’s point was rather unclear, Rios was quite insistent that this was an effort by the “thought police” to “control how we feel … about the homosexual lifestyle.” That sort of claim is nothing particularly new, but Rios’ appearance alone tells you something about the depth to which Beck and the entire movement have sunk in their unhinged panic about the state of the nation during the Obama administration’s first one hundred days that people. It’s strange to hold up as the voice of reason, considering that her most recent column accuses Obama and the Democrats of attempting to destroy George Bush, Dick Cheney, and others just as the Nazis, Stalin, and Pol Pot did to their enemies:
Totalitarian movements have always destroyed their enemies. Peter the Great of Russia murdered members of the Streltsy military corps by taking the ax of the executioner to cut off their heads one by one himself. The Bolsheviks murdered the last Russian Czar—along with his wife and family—by telling them they were going to have their picture made. As they smiled into the camera, they were shot, buried and had acid poured over their remains.
Stalin continued the blood bath of the Russian Revolution by murdering thousands of his own who didn’t agree with Marxism. The Nazis had their gas chambers, not just for Jews, but also for dissenters. Fidel Castro turned his popularity into tyranny and brave Cubans gave their lives trying to free their beloved island. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia tortured and murdered the intelligentsia in the S21, the regular folk in the Killing Fields. The slightest lack of support for Pol Pot and the new regime earned one a place in a mass grave.
There was a dreadful logic in all of this: By killing the opposition, you eliminated any possibility of future resistance, and you eradicated any personality who could possibly remind or rally future generations to any other way of thinking. Power was—at least for a time—absolute in each situation.
…
Now the president, however coyly, and the Democratic leadership, boldly, are seeking to prosecute the last administration for political disagreements by calling them crimes. They want to punish Bush officials who gave legal advice and permission to proceed with interrogation techniques including water boarding that documents show most assuredly saved American lives.
They have released top secret documents, jeopardizing American safety further by making the people who protect and defend us worried sick both for fear of retribution and the very real potential harm that could be done to the nation as a result.
Former President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, Karl Rove and attorneys at Justice and the CIA won’t be lined up and shot, but they will, if this insidious method of taking power has its way, be destroyed financially and personally—with their reputation in shreds.
And then who will stand up to speak against the dominant left? No one. And that’s the point.
We have come to point where the Right is claiming that exposing the use of torture makes President Obama just as bad as actual torturers and mass murders, while the people responsible for the sanctioning the use of torture are held up as the real victims.
Perhaps it was just coincidental timing, but just a week after Newsweek declared "The End of Christian America," Sarah Posner points out that Newmax is out with its own special edition entitled "Jesus: Will He Return?"
Experts of various stripes tell Newsmax that public buzz about the biblical last days is at its highest level since 9/11. Although the Second Coming may appear purely theological to some, end-times beliefs can profoundly influence where people worship, where they donate their money, which politicians they vote for, and how they spend their time and energy.
Over the course of more than a dozen pages, Newsmax reports the views of a variety of right-wing figures, including the likes of Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Richard Land, Chuck Colson, Tom Minnery, and Tim LaHaye:
“There is rising concern over the economy and national security, as well as downright open alarm at the leftist drift of our national government in the Obama era,” says Tom Minnery, the Focus on the Family executive who frequently co-hosts Dr. James Dobson’s influential Christian radio program. “Although evangelicals are confident about the outcome in the long run — that is, the Second Coming — we are very concerned about the short term.”
Similar concerns are voiced by radio host, author, and Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson. Prison Fellowship is a nonprofit prison ministry. Colson has seen his share of personal tribulations, including his front-row view of Watergate, the Arab oil embargo, and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
Yet with all that perspective, Colson confides, “If I were in the business of speculating when Christ will return, I would certainly have a field day today. There is enough going on to make you think that Western Civilization is in the balance. If civilization falls there’s nothing to keep stability in the Middle East and then, of course, you could see the Armageddon.”
The article actually contains an interesting analysis of whether predictions about the End Times are actually harmful because, when they fail to come true, it damages the Christian faith and "hurts the Bible’s credibility in the eyes of the secular world" ... and, as LaHaye points out, the secular world already hates Christians as it is:
“The one thing that the seculars hate more than anything else is Christians,” he tells Newsmax. “You see that in our newspapers today. It indicates that they don’t trust Christians. They hate Christians. They want to stamp us out and keep us out of the public schools."
But, of course, that didn't stop him suggesting that the rise in "socialism" might just be a harbinger of things to come:
LaHaye sees ominous parallels between today’s times and Christ’s message to his disciples in Matthew 24:5-8. In it, Christ said: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: See that ye be not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in diverse places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.”
In an exclusive interview, LaHaye tells Newsmax: “What we see going on in the world is just like Jesus said — in the last days, perilous times will come. Well, they are perilous, not only in the political field. And socialism is sweeping the world. Even Newsweek magazine recently announced on its cover that ‘We Are All Socialists Now.’
“It’s a new thought, for the American people anyway. World socialism is the forerunner to the Antichrist kind of government that he is going to run during the Tribulation period.”
Back before the holidays, I came across a press release on Christian Newswire from Steve McConkey of Underground Apologetics blasting Focus on the Family for posting a short interview with Glenn Beck about his new book "The Christmas Sweater." McConkey was outraged that Focus dared to post the interview without mentioning that Beck is Mormon and that “Mormonism is a cult”:
While Glenn's social views are compatible with many Christian views, his beliefs in Mormonism are not. Clearly, Mormonism is a cult. The CitizenLink story does not mention Beck's Mormon faith, however, the story makes it look as if Beck is a Christian who believes in the essential doctrines of the faith.
Through the years, Focus on the Family has done great things to help the family and has brought attention to the many social ills that are attacking the family.
However, to promote a Mormon as a Christian is not helpful to the cause of Jesus Christ. For Christians to influence society, Christians should be promoting the central issues of the faith properly without opening the door to false religions.
At the time, I ignored the press release because it seemed like just another example of a relatively unknown and unimportant fringe right-wing figure trying to gin up some press for himself … but it turns out that McConkey’s gripes apparently had more influence than I had realized as Focus subsequently pulled the interview from its website:
James Dobson's Focus on the Family ministry has pulled from its CitizenLink Web site an article about talk show host Glenn Beck's book "The Christmas Sweater" after some complained that Beck's LDS faith is a "cult" and "false religion" and shouldn't be promoted by a Christian ministry.
When contacted Friday, a Focus on the Family worker at the ministry in Colorado Springs, Colo. confirmed that the article had been pulled …
For his part Beck is none-too-pleased with Focus’s “censorship” while the organization insists that McConkey’s attack had nothing to do with its decision to yank the article:
Focus on the Family got to work this week in explaining in detail why it pulled from its website an interview with a Mormon author.
“We intended no insult,” expressed ministry spokesman Gary Schneeberger, in a statement. “[W]e merely miscalculated on how best to feature Glenn [Beck], whom we greatly appreciate.”
…
Beck, however, maintains that the book's message can be and has been embraced by people of different faiths and should not be “censored” because of his own personal religious views. The book tells the narrative of a boy named Eddie who embarks on a dark and painful journey on the road to manhood.
“The Christmas Sweater is a story about the idea of Christmas as a time for redemption and atonement,” Beck expressed in a released statement after the interview was pulled from Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink website.
“Whatever your beliefs about my religion, the concept of religious tolerance is too important to be sacrificed in response to pressure from special interest groups, especially when it means bowing to censorship,” he added.
According to Schneeberger, however, Focus on the Family could not intimate to its evangelical base that the differences in Mormon faith and the historic evangelical faith are inconsequential.
“We can, and do, gladly cooperate with friends outside of the evangelical heritage on common causes; but in no case do we intend to alter our clear distinction as unwaveringly grounded in evangelical theology,” he explained.
But Schneeberger made sure to also distance the ministry from another that had strongly rebuked it for the article’s posting.
“[W]e do not condone the tone of communications put out from UnderGround Apologetics,” he clarified, referring to the controversial apologetics ministry that spoke out against Focus on the Family last week. “And we can without reservation say that the group's news release had nothing to do with our decision to pull the article from publication."
