And so we enter the final chapter of Common Sense, titled “Is it a rising or a setting sun?” And within the first two paragraphs, he italicizes no less than five phrases and uses all caps twice, including the rarely-seen small caps: “WE ARE NOT SHEEP. AMERICANS HAVE NEVER BEEN SHEEP”. Yes, he really does make ‘AMERICANS’ smaller than the rest of his text. I have no clue why he does that. He then arrogantly goes on to proclaim that “If the American experiment fails, then so does the cause of liberty, not just here, but around the world.” Really? So out of all the countries in the world, now and forever, none of them have ‘liberty’ except for the US? I don’t even know what to say to that.

He then brings up a list of inventions from ‘the lone entrepreneur’ attracted by ‘America’s promise of freedom’, including the computer, lightbulb, car, telephone, assembly line (treating workers like machines is freedom now?), and… the Popsicle? But you know, I guess that governments and non-American individuals can’t compete: just look at this sorry list of inventions:

• The Internet (a project of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a government agency)
• The World Wide Web (invented by the British Tim Berners-Lee)
• Arguably, the concept of a computer itself and much of modern computer science was invented by British mathematician Alan Turing (who later committed suicide after being put on mandatory estrogen therapy for his homosexuality, an act which the British government has only recently apologized for)
• GPS, which was originally a US Navy project
• The vaccine, invented by Edward Jenner in the 1770s

I could go on, but that’s not the point.

The point is that Glenn Beck is incredibly crazy, and that the ‘common sense’ he’s devoted this entire book to are nothing more than the ramblings of a madman interspersed with the occasional good point. Is it an act? Is he just trying to make money? Or does he, perhaps, actually believe what he’s saying? The point is immaterial because the end result is the same: there are people who believe this, who honestly believe that September 12th was a moment when the nation came together instead of a moment when America was basically reeling in shock. I don’t attribute this to maliciousness, at least not for the majority of people. Unlike some people I know, I think that Republicans are simply misinformed. But the misinformers, the Glenn Becks and the Ann Coulters and the Rush Limbaughs of the world, are the root cause of the problem.

So what do we do about it? We, the progressives (liberal is a dirty word now) have to take back modern political discourse and shape it for a better cause. I think the advent of the Internet has helped, enabling the random person to have a voice, no matter how insignificant or small. But the important thing is to not give up hope; if you give up on Obama and Democrats, then it will only legitimize his critics when they point to a low approval rating, deliberately glossing over the fact that it’s low because to many he’s not progressive enough. Donate to your favorite political causes, write about what you’re interested in, just don’t give up. But what I don’t think you should do is splinter off into a third party; sure, if you live in a solidly blue state, like Illinois or California or something, by all means vote SPUSA. But if you live in a battleground state, then splitting the progressive vote could easily lose you the state; remember what happened to Gore in 2000. Don’t let that happen again in 2012.