Glenn Beck - Latter Day "Taint"

[DemocracyInaction]

Last summer a local, free newspaper had an article by this title. It pointed out that when Beck converted to Mormonism it was to a wacko, radical version (by a guy named Benson, I believe)and that the Mormon church has been trying to erase and distance itself from the era/teachings of that wack job. Apparently, Beck's political rants are strangely similar to the rantings of this nut job--like lifted wholesale from the wacko's writings. The article brought up an intersting question:

Remember how the Christian Right crapped its pants over Romney running for president because they think Mormons are not "real Christians" and are a dangerous cult? Well, what would those same sheep feel if they knew they were being brain washed by some super radical Mormon teachings?? Gasp...have they been dragged into a CULT without realizing it??? Oh, Glenn boy...if they ever figure it out, you could end up being "bagged" by tea-toters.

[hedgehog]

1. This deserves to be broadcast.

:thumbsup:

[hlthe2b]

2. Yes.. these freeper mouth breathers that profess Xianity overall

and denigrate all other religions as "cults," including Mormanism and Catholicism--have as their "heros," LImbaugh (who knows, but I suspect agnostic), O'Liely (Roman Catholic), Hannity (Roman Catholic), Beck (Morman)....


Either their ignorance extends even further than I'd guessed, or their hypocrisy is without limits.

[Mz Pip]

3. I think if you are wacky

enough, crazy enough and are willing to spew the most bizarre of talking points the Christian Right will forgive you a multitude of sins and that includes being a radical Mormon.

Beck is a useful tool for these folks.

[thunder rising]

4. He's a Mormon? This is too funny. The only thing worse would be a "wide stance" discovery.

[T Wolf]

5. Oh PLEASE let this be true - and exposed - and acted on by the cult members taken in

by this POS.

Strange that this has not been determined to be "newsworthy" by that librul media. :sarcasm:

Just once I would like to see one of them called on their shit. Just once. Not because it would actually change anything. Nor have any serious consequences. Nor even to reinforce my almost-gone belief in fairness.

But just for the shits and giggles of seeing one of theirs get torn up. Not "advanced" or "merciful" or necessarily "progressive." But it would be damn satisfying.

[DemocracyInaction]

7. Sarah needs to take a shower

after appearing with him. I mean a good Christian girl like her in the lair of a "cult".........

[libodem]

6. Sometimes he sounds like he's

bearing his testimony rather than giving an opinion piece. Guano is 'batshit crazy'.

[Kitty Herder]

19. I think that's why he cries.

He likely learned that fake crying bullcrap in fast and testimony meeting. And it plays well with his crazy, right-wing, Mormon fans.

[Radical Activist]

8. I think you mean Ezra Taft Benson

He was President of the Mormon church in the 80's, Sec. of Agriculture under Eisenhower, a rabid anti-communist, and a John Bircher. This was no radical offshoot of Mormonism. He lead the entire church.

Benson did have to tone down his political talk when he became a top church leader. But, he's one of the reasons Mormons gravitated toward the far-right.

[DemocracyInaction]

9. RadicalActivist---Correct

That's exactly the person whose name I was trying to remember. He was a total crazy of the McCarthy type. Now do we see where Glenn boy gets his ideas of hidden message in buildings, etc. Honest to God, I swear Fox will give Charlie Manson his own show some day.

[Radical Activist]

10. Yep.

There are some themes in Beck's rants that fit in with Mormon thought if you know what to listen for. Of course, there are some very liberal viewpoints in Mormonism (like in any religion) but Beck will ignore that. The right wing did a great job of coopting the mormon church, like so many others. What can you say about a church that was nearly destroyed for practicing a nontraditional form of marriage in the 1800's deciding that gay marriage is now their top political issue? Bizarre.

[DemocracyInaction]

11. Being "against"

It bothers me when a religion defines itself by all it's "against" instead of positive things. However, as the Repukes know well, it's what creates a power structure and fanatical followers.

[Kitty Herder]

16. They were also socialists back in th 1800s.

What was the United Order if not a kind of socialism?

But now they're rabidly against anything that even smacks of socialism.

[fishwax]

17. ETB, who said you can't be a good democrat and still be a good mormon

or something to that effect--can't remember the exact quote.

[nolabear]

12. Beck, Skouse, Benson, Communism, Mormonism, The Constitution, God

Apparently Beck is a devotee of Cold War era Mormons Skouse and The Prophet Benson, two men who were deeply invested in being anti-communist to the point of paranoia (not as odd during tht era as now). But he also apparently adheres to the original Mormon writings that postulate that The Constitution is a sacred document, and may even be as much the voice of God as anything.

Given that Beck has such profound trauma where his parents are involved, it might not be at all surprising that he would want to adhere without question to the teachings of a patriarchal religion and its more radical adherents. Yes, that's ad hoc psychoanalysis and isn't meant to excuse or dismiss the danger of what he does.

OR he's a clown with an interesting and strangely inspired bag of tricks. Who knows?

[DemocracyInaction]

13. My era...

...was that "Commie under every rock" era and that's why my skin crawls when I see that man. Our modern version is "a terrorist under every rock" which is bad enough and promotes the stagnation of fear. He's just trying to add frosting on to it so that we are too paralyzed to get out of the way of the crap he and the Repukes are promoting. I always wanted to write to that show and ask him this question: How come we are on a downslide and "Commie" China seems to own us lock, stock and balls? Looks like that Commie thingy is working pretty good and that unbridled Capitalist thingy is working for the guys who send our jobs to China.

[Toasterlad]

14. How Fucking Wacky a Cult Do You Have To Be If the Fucking MORMONS Want Nothing To Do With You?

Scary.

[DemocracyInaction]

15. Okay--now that made me laugh

I wonder if the Mormons are regretting letting Glenn into the club????

[Kitty Herder]

18. I think you're unintentionally misrepresenting Benson.

You say he lead a wacko, radical "version" of the LDS church. It may have been wacky and radical, but it was no mere "version." He was the president of the mainstream LDS church out of Salt Lake City, the one with all the money and power. ALL Mormon's have had their worldview shaped by Ezra Taft Benson. Either they learned directly from him when he was the prophet like I did as a kid(note: I no longer consider myself Mormon.)or they've learned from his writings and by being taught by others who learned from him. Every prophet leaves their mark on the church and Benson was no exception.

Also, Benson's politics weren't considered extreme by most of the Mormons I know. Of course, most Mormons I know think Glenn Beck is the best thing since sliced bread. He thinks just like they do. He echoes their prejudices back at them. Don't kid yourself into thinking that the extreme politics of Ezra Taft Benson and Glenn Beck aren't the Mormon mainstream. Experience tells me they are.

[robertpaulsen]

20. I believe the man is Cleon Skousen.

I would recommend reading this article on Glenn Beck's favorite author Cleon Skousen, a racist so extreme right that even the John Birch Society couldn't handle him.


Wednesday, Sep 16, 2009 03:18 EDT
Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life
Cleon Skousen was a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised. Then Beck discovered him
By Alexander Zaitchik

snip

In reality, however, the so-called 912ers were summoned to D.C. by the man who changed Beck's life, and that helps explain why the movement is not the nonpartisan lovefest that Beck first sold on air with his trademark tears. Beck has created a massive meet-up for the disaffected, paranoid Palin-ite "death panel" wing of the GOP, those ideologues most susceptible to conspiracy theories and prone to latch on to eccentric distortions of fact in the name of opposing "socialism." In that, they are true disciples of the late W. Cleon Skousen, Beck's favorite writer and the author of the bible of the 9/12 movement, "The 5,000 Year Leap." A once-famous anti-communist "historian," Skousen was too extreme even for the conservative activists of the Goldwater era, but Glenn Beck has now rescued him from the remainder pile of history, and introduced him to a receptive new audience.

Anyone who has followed Beck will recognize the book's title. Beck has been furiously promoting "The 5,000 Year Leap" for the past year, a push that peaked in March when he launched the 912 Project. That month, a new edition of "The 5,000 Year Leap," complete with a laudatory new foreword by none other than Glenn Beck, came out of nowhere to hit No. 1 on Amazon. It remained in the top 15 all summer, holding the No. 1 spot in the government category for months. The book tops Beck's 912 Project "required reading" list, and is routinely sold at 912 Project meetings where guest speakers often use it as their primary source material. At one 912 meet-up I attended in Florida, copies were stacked high on a table against the back wall, available for the 912 nice price of $15. "Don't bother trying to get it at the library," one 912er told me. "The wait list is 40 deep."

What has Beck been pushing on his legions? "Leap," first published in 1981, is a heavily illustrated and factually challenged attempt to explain American history through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology. As such, it is an early entry in the ongoing attempt by the religious right to rewrite history. Fundamentalists want to define the United States as a Christian nation rather than a secular republic, and recast the Founding Fathers as devout Christians guided by the Bible rather than deists inspired by French and English philosophers. "Leap" argues that the U.S. Constitution is a godly document above all else, based on natural law, and owes more to the Old and New Testaments than to the secular and radical spirit of the Enlightenment. It lists 28 fundamental beliefs -- based on the sayings and writings of Moses, Jesus, Cicero, John Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith -- that Skousen says have resulted in more God-directed progress than was achieved in the previous 5,000 years of every other civilization combined. The book reads exactly like what it was until Glenn Beck dragged it out of Mormon obscurity: a textbook full of aggressively selective quotations intended for conservative religious schools like Utah's George Wythe University, where it has been part of the core freshman curriculum for decades (and where Beck spoke at this year's annual fundraiser).

But more interesting than the contents of "The 5,000 Year Leap," and more revealing for what it says about 912ers and the Glenn Beck Nation, is the book's author. W. Cleon Skousen was not a historian so much as a player in the history of the American far right; less a scholar of the republic than a threat to it. At least, that was the judgment of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, which maintained a file on Skousen for years that eventually totaled some 2,000 pages. Before he died in 2006 at the age of 92, Skousen's own Mormon church publicly distanced itself from the foundation that Skousen founded and that has published previous editions of "The 5,000 Year Leap."

more...

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/16/beck_skousen/

[JoeyT]

21. It didn't bother them very much that some of their marching orders were coming from Moonies

so I don't think much will come of it.
Remember, these are people that just refuse to believe anything they don't like.