Welcome to part 2 out of (hopefully) 9 in my mega-review of Glenn Beck’s Common Sense. In this part, I’ll be tackling the first actual chapter of his book, entitled “The Reshaping and Redefining of America.” Hopefully, I’ll keep the review/book length lower than Part 1; I think I wrote twice as many words as Glenn himself did.

Beck opens with the usual ‘politicians are corrupt, we’ve lost control of America, etc.’ stuff. I agree with him on this point (although definitely not in the way he means it!), in that special interest groups have far too much power. He actually does get it right when he remarks that

Through legitimate “emergencies” involving war, terror, and economic crises, politicians on both sides have gathered illegitimate new powers—playing on our fears and desire for security and economic stability—at the expense of our freedoms.

Now, I’m not saying that Glenn Beck is a modern-day intellectual. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that there’s been a major power play in American politics, especially after 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act. The issue of the growing power of the executive branch, especially with signing statements and such, is a serious issue, one that I don’t mean to discuss; suffice it to say that Beck and I agree on this point. But where we diverge is on the solution to this problem.

On the very same page with the quote I mentioned above, he literally states that “free government housing,… [or] welfare dependency” constitutes selling one’s birthright. How? He doesn’t elaborate on this; presumably the reader is left to conclude that accepting anything for free makes you less of a man or something, I don’t know. According to Glenn Beck, we’ve become a nation who “would rather be cared for, fed, clothed, housed, and told what’s best for us by a parentlike state.” I’m sorry, but the last time I checked, one of the duties of a nation was to ensure the health of all of its citizens, not to leave them alone to die naked and penniless in the streets. If he’s trying to scare his audience, then I’m not sure how he hopes to accomplish this by the image of a nation providing food, clothing, and housing for its citizens. The entire reason that nations exist is to improve the welfare of their citizens; if we go back to the Constitution, one of the reasons it was created in the first place was to “insure domestic tranquility, [and] promote the general welfare.” And as for the state ‘telling us what’s best for us’… isn’t that basically what laws are? The government telling us that it’s better that people not kill, steal, etc.?

A few pages later, Glenn Beck seems to get it again when he complains about “politicians and the media [telling] us that America is about having the most stuff, the nicest cars, and the biggest homes.” He just seems so close to realizing that in any sort of capitalistic society, there will always be incentive to create a need to increase demand, and therefore profit. But according to him, “compassion and capitalism go hand in hand.” What? He doesn’t back this one up either, nor his assertion that capitalism and greed are mutually exclusive. Isn’t a corporation legally obligated to its shareholders to make as much money as it possibly can? He asks whether our “public servants” (quotes his) really are interested in defending our “life, liberty, and property.” Now, while the individual government employee may not give a shit about you and your house, the government as a whole is obligated to. But what does a corporation have to care about? Nothing but its bottom line. If you live in an area with unfair laws, you can get them challenged. If you have to deal with a corporation with unfair contracts because they’re the only ones that provide service X, you can… what?

Again, for the most part this chapter isn’t terribly unreasonable; he’s mostly right at least about the causes of the current sorry state of America: our politicians are utter shit. The really horrible stuff comes in later chapters, like in chapter 5, “The Cancer of Progressivism”, where he states that religion is necessary for a moral society. I can’t wait!