What Glenn Beck knows

Posted on October 28, 2010 by David S. Meyer

It’s not what he says he knows: American history or the  Constitution.  The factual errors in his history lessons appear routinely, draw criticism or correction, and then vanish into the ether.  They don’t appear to bother him, audience, or his employers.   Beck’s fans support the sentiments underneath his interpretations of history or the Constitution, and his critics emphasize his ignorance.

After all, although Glenn Beck claims to understand something deep about American life, does he really hold himself up as a scholar of the Constitution or America’s past?  A college dropout, Beck has been working too hard to develop much expertise in anything beyond cultivating an audience.  Aside from his television and radio shows, he endorses products, films commercials, and is constantly on the road giving speeches.  Before emerging as a busy star, he was a busy journeyman on the radio.  He’s spent so much time talking that he really hasn’t had the time to develop a command of the events of American history or the scholarship on judicial interpretation.  In some ways, just what he says doesn’t seem to matter.

The Princeton historian Sean Wilentz shows otherwise in a recent article in The New Yorker. Wilentz takes what Beck says more seriously, apparently, than Beck himself does, and traces the rants against government, taxation, Progressivism, and his easy (and completely ahistorical) association of Communism and Fascism, to the John Birch Society.  Founded by candymaker Robert Welch in 1958, the Birch Society dominated discourse on the loony right after Senator Joe McCarthy’s dramatic decline.  Welch saw President Eisenhower as every bit as dangerous as familiar conservative bogeymen like Franklin Roosevelt.

The most significant difference between Beck and Welch, according to Wilentz, is the reaction of a group of very conservative Republicans.  Led by National Review editor William F. Buckley, hardly a moderate, a respectable right condemned the Birchers, and worked to keep them insulated from any legitimacy or influence.  Perhaps they were motivated by the pragmatic politics of avoiding guilt by association, or perhaps it was some sort of moral commitment to telling the truth, but the conservatives condemned their lunatic fringe.  Years later, President Ronald Reagan recognized their political value, but still kept them out of the policy process.

Wilentz also looks at Beck’s academic inspiration, Willard Cleon Skousen, whose book, The 5,000 Year Leap, jumped onto Amazon’s best seller list when Beck promoted it.  Skousen was an activist, author, police chief (Salt Lake City), one-time FBI agent, and briefly, a professor at Brigham Young University.  Skousen argued that the Founders were divinely inspired, and rooted the Constitution firmly in the Bible.  Wilentz writes:

“The 5,000 Year Leap” is not a fervid book. Instead, it is calmly, ingratiatingly misleading. Skousen quotes various eighteenth-century patriots on the evils of what Samuel Adams, in 1768, called “the Utopian schemes of leveling,” which Skousen equates with redistribution of wealth. But he does not mention the Founders’ endorsement of taxing the rich to support the general welfare. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote approvingly in 1811 of having federal taxes (then limited to tariffs) fall solely on the wealthy, which meant that “the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”

Skousen also challenges the separation of church and state, asserting that “the Founders were not indulging in any idle gesture when they adopted the motto ‘In God We Trust.’ ” In reality, the motto that came out of the Constitutional Convention was “E Pluribus Unum”: out of many, one. “In God We Trust” came much later; its use on coins was first permitted in 1864, and only in 1955, at the height of the Cold War, did Congress mandate that it appear on all currency. The following year, President Eisenhower—who Welch charged was a Communist agent—approved “In God We Trust” as the national motto.

Skousen, like Beck, traces America’s decline to Woodrow Wilson and Progressivism.  For his views, Skousen was criticized not only by historians (understandably dismissive of his work) but also conservatives and mainstream Republicans, purged by ultraconservative groups, and condemned by the President of the Mormon church.

At Slate, historian David Greenberg elaborates on the current conservative fixation with Woodrow Wilson, a president no one is eager to defend, much less claim.  Greenberg identifies other, extremely marginal, academics who inform (odd verb in this context) Beck’s worldview.

Using the chalkboard and a few odd (very odd) texts on television, Beck offers what passes as an intellectual undergirding of his positions.  Professional historians, like Wilentz and Greenberg, understand the interpretive leaps that Beck’s sources make.  They care about looking at documents, evaluating evidence, and consulting existing scholarship.

Beck, and at least some of his audience, are not similarly encumbered.  What Glenn Beck knows is that they don’t have to be in order to exercise political influence.  In tough times, a good story, well-told, reinforces and sharpens the frustration people feel, and identifies villains and heroes.  It builds an audience, and even a following, for Beck himself.

But how stable is it?

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What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook

Posted on October 25, 2010 by David S. Meyer

I wish that line was mine, but it’s not.  Caroline Lee, skeptical about the potential impact of of social media on democracy in general and social movements specifically, offered the summary evaluation–along with some observations.

The question is whether all of the ostensibly lively action on the web actually translates into real politics.   We’ve talked about this before–and before.  Do our friends or followers online really care about us and what we think?  How strong are virtual ties?

I think the problem is that analysts confuse a form of communication with some kind of idealized social connection.

Online media are great at projecting a message to people we already know, but getting them to agree with you–or, even more, take some action, usually requires a little more effort than posting.  Our friends can block (technically or psychologically) some of our communications.  They might disagree, or they might just have better things to do.  The problem is thinking that posting a note about an issue or an event frees us of the need to do all that other organizing work.  A Facebook post works better if it’s followed by a phone call or visit.  The trap is getting a vicarious thrill and sense of participation by posting your analysis–and letting it go at that.  I certainly am not convinced that the one million people on FB who say they believe taxes are too high or gay marriage is good or any of a hundred other groups…matters in some substantial way.

At the same time, online media offer the promise of more unfiltered communication, achieved more easily.  Liu Xiaobo’s petition was online, but generated sufficient visibility to provoke the Chinese government’s crackdown–and win a Nobel prize.  Vaclav Havel’s Charter 77 was on paper.

Before the Soviet Union fell, activists there and in Eastern Europe practiced politics by circulating samizdat literature, hand-to-hand, in dense networks based on trust.  The same arguments can reach broader audiences more quickly now, albeit with less in the way of trust or personal connections.  Important action followed the efforts of authorities in cracking down or crushing these arguments and activists.

The Tea Party or Moveon.org can organize online, raising money and distributing information broadly–and relatively cheaply.  Getting people to do more requires more work.

And the challenge: getting a message to stand out from all the clutter in our inboxes, provoke attention and inspire action.

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Strikes in France

Posted on October 21, 2010 by David S. Meyer

French citizens are taking to the streets in response to large cuts in social spending, most notably, an increase in the retirement age from 60 to 62.  Nicolas Sarkozy, like leaders in most of Europe, has pressed for these cuts as a response to both the recession and budget deficits.

And, as they have before, the French people are protesting in dramatic events, often organized by the large labor unions.  In contrast to the generational resentment brewing in the United States, young people have been aggressive in protesting against the hike in retirement age; they say they want French seniors to retire and open jobs for the next generation.

Sixty-two, you’ll note, is the age at which Americans can retire and collect reduced Social Security benefits; the top level of benefits is available to Americans who retire at 70.  And we know that life expectancy in the United States is about 2.5 years less than in France.  But American seniors haven’t taken to the streets to advocate for themselves–at least not yet.  Meanwhile, municipal workers in France have gone on strike; public transit has shut down and garbage is piling up in French cities.

French youth protest against hiking the retirement age

Oddly, the French seniors have both a greater sense of entitlement and far less meaningful political access than their counterparts in the United States.  American seniors, represented by very large and powerful groups like the AARP, protect what they have (especially Social Security and Medicare) throughvoting, campaign contributions, and lobbying.  For the most part, the Americans don’t build broad alliances with youth or labor.

The whole system of interest groups makes reform in the United States exceptionally difficult; it’s far easier to stop something–anything–from happening than to promote policy change.  And we don’t see those large and disruptive strikes.

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A March is not a Movement

Posted on October 19, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Fifteen years after the Million Man March, it’s hard to find any kind of substantial effect.  At The Root, Jon Jeter writes that Black community is more divided than it was in 1995, and that, as a group, Black men are doing worse.  Although he doesn’t provide much in the way of numbers, he could point to unemployment, income, college attendance, and incarceration rates, and make the case in frightful detail.  (Jeter also discussed his column on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.)

In retrospect, the controversies surrounding the Million Man March–and its initiator, Minister Louis Farrakhan, seem ridiculously overblown.  Among other things, Farrakhan preached self-help, and the march ended with a call for Black men to return to their communities and do better.  You could spend a lot of time searching for a political program there, as I–and others did–and not find one.  In a way, the march was a replacement for politics rather than a call to collective action.

Farrakhan’s relations with the political leadership of the black community were erratic at best.  His march was an event, not clearly connected to any kind of political program, nor to any coordinated campaign of collective action before or afterward.

A contrast with the 1963 March on Washington is telling.  The large demonstration, sponsored by several competing organizations, expressed many clear demands on government (you can see some in the photo).  Indeed, the organizers argued about just what those demands would be.  More significantly, the March on Washington was a dramatic punctuation mark in a much longer series of campaigns, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott (started in 1955), the Freedom Rides (of the early 1960s), SNCC’s sit-in campaign, started in 1960, and Freedom Summer (1964).  Other activists lobbied members of Congress, filed lawsuits, and generally mobilized supporters of civil rights across the country.  The large demonstration mattered to the extent it was embedded in something much larger.

But the Million Man March was not unique.  The Promisekeepers, a Christian conservative group, staged a large demonstration on the National Mall in 1997, calling on men to “stand in the gap,” and provide moral leadership for their families and for their country.  Very much like the Million Man March, men left the event feeling inspired and empowered, and no clear politics emerged.  (To be sure, conservative social movements continued, but the Promisekeepers were not a big part of them.)

So, what are we to make of Glenn Beck’s 9-12 March in August?  Although Beck hasn’t shied from political pronouncements, he has been clear that he is NOT a Tea Partier, and that his ambitions are different–and broader–than political change.   the 9 principles and 12 values offered as the core of Beck’s campaign embed expressions of limited government in a much larger web of religious and generic patriotic sentiments.  If this is all they do, it’s hard to imagine an impact greater than the Million Man March or the Promisekeepers.

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Democratizing Inequalities

Posted on October 18, 2010 by David S. Meyer

At some point, the call for “power to the people” transmographied into calls for “empowerment.”  Demands for influence were answered by offers of inclusion or dialogue or deliberation.

So, what does all this talking lead to?

The question is whether these new “democratic” procedures–and the new industry that’s emerged to promote and coordinate them– actually promote responsiveness on policy, meaningful political inclusion, or greater citizen engagement?

Caroline Lee, Mike McQuarrie, and Ed Walker organized a wonderful conference at NYU to explore these issues.   The quick answer seems disturbing: not only don’t these new venues promote a more democratic politics, they may actually stand in the way of one.

See what you think.

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How are GLBT activists getting along? Don’t Ask.

Posted on October 12, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Federal Judge Virginia Phillips today issued an injunction banning the military’s enforcement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell globally.   The decision is all over the news, of course.  Judge Phillips was responding to a suit filed by the Log Cabin Republicans six years ago.

Of course, what a district court giveth, a higher court can take away.  Right now, however, we can see the strategic dilemmas inherent in pursuing social change through the courts.  We can also see the diverse and sloppy coalitions that make up social protest movements in the United States.

While the Log Cabin Republicans endorsed John McCain for President in 2008, most GLBT organizations (and activists) worked for–and helped to fund–Barack Obama’s candidacy.  President Obama’s (limited) efforts to advance GLBT causes have disappointed many of them, most recently, when the Senate refused to incorporate a ban on Don’t Ask in its authorization bill.

In a long and controversial article in Congress.org, Ambreen Ali reports on what she describes as a widening rift within the GLBT movement over how to end Don’t Ask.  The Human Rights Campaign, a large group pursuing multiple issues, had led the lobbying effort in the Senate.  Others, including the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, claimed the HRC didn’t push hard enough, letting its allies, including President Obama, off the hook on critical issues.  They argued for putting more direct pressure on purported allies who were willing to put Don’t Ask on the back burner, and for cultivating a more visible public profile.  Some, including Dan Choi, tried to stoke activism and visibility by taking dramatic action, including a hunger strike.  (Choi, left, a West Point graduate, served as an infantry officer in Iraq, and was discharged after coming out on the Rachel Maddow show.)

Such disputes within social movements are common.  Movements are diverse and sloppy coalitions, filled with people who agree on some issues, and disagree on others–including ultimate goals and the best ways to pursue them.   Harsh threats and exceptional opportunities encourage them to cooperate, but internal disputes are constant.

In this case, the HRC has a broad agenda to protect, while the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is organized exclusively around open service in the military.  The HRC has to worry about husbanding resources and maintaining access and credibility with allies in Congress.  The Servicemembers are more willing to do whatever it takes to win on this issue now.  The HRC claims to have done the best it could with the current Congress and the current climate–and this may be true–but we can understand why the Servicemembers are frustrated and cynical.

Meanwhile, by taking the initiative, Judge Phillips has changed the game.  The Obama administration now has to work to prevent change–rather than to make it.   Alternatively, it could let the policy disappear without fighting too hard.  The HRC can move to focus on other elements of its agenda.  And the Log Cabin Republicans can claim some vindication, while continuing their uphill struggle to recruit gays and lesbians to the Republican Party and promoting tolerance within the Party.

Because Court-initiated change isn’t dependent upon winning battles in the legislature or public opinion, it virtually ensures backlash protest.   Watch for the backlash within the Republican Party.

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More on Westboro

Posted on October 7, 2010 by David S. Meyer

If you can find a remotely credible source that credits Westboro Baptist Church with even a hundred members, you’re a more energetic or skilled researcher than I am.  When Pastor Phelps describes his congregation as family, he’s not really stretching the truth.

The lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court, Margie Phelps, is Fred’s daughter, hardly a hired gun.  Indeed, she’s been an active contributor at a large number of the Westboro protests against sin.  (In most movements I know about, there’s a sharper division of labor between advocates in the courts and activists in the streets.)

Either Phelps would readily describe their views as well outside the mainstream of American life, shared by very few Americans.  (Don’t take my word for it; read an interview with Margie.)

No doubt, it’s not hard to find sin in America (although we often differ on definitions: splitting infinitives?  cheese with seafood?).  Westboro protests at servicemen’s funerals, the Holocaust museum, and Catholic colleges–among other sites, not because they are the most sinful, but because they will be the most visible.

Dahlia Lithwick offers an analysis of the court case at Slate.  She says constitutional law on these matters is unambiguous (the first amendment protects hateful speech), and wonders why the Court took the case.  She speculates the some of the justices wanted to condemn the protesters.

So, in comments, Lukas asks whether disruption really works?  Would you know about the Westboro church without it?

Maryann Barakso wonders whether there is any long-lasting benefits for the crusaders against sin.  Certainly, the Westboro campaigns probably don’t help the cause of a much larger number of people who advance a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.  They’re not the people you want carrying your cause.

Deana Rohlinger offers another answer: witnessing and facing opposition and confrontation is a testing by fire that solidifies the faith of the few, their identities as Westboro fundamentalists, and their commitment to the cause.

Note that other marginal causes employ similar tactics. Here are a couple of examples from the acolytes of Lyndon Larouche.

Such efforts aren’t about convincing people of the merits of your claim.  Rather, it’s about getting attention through/and provoking confrontation.

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Intolerance of Intolerance

Posted on October 6, 2010 by David S. Meyer

What if your cause doesn’t have many supporters?  Smaller numbers have to take on more extreme tactics or make more outlandish claims in order to win the kind of attention that those large demonstrations on the Washington mall get.    A handful of protesters milling on the mall won’t make news.  Disruption does.

So, the Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kansas, hit upon the idea of staging anti-gay demonstrations outside the funerals of soldiers, sailors, or marines killed in combat.  The point wasn’t about the serviceman’s background (which church members never knew), so much as Pastor Fred Phelps vehement opposition to homosexuality.   Small numbers disrupted the solemnity that normally attends funerals, and  broke into news coverage by their sheer daring and outlandishness.  This is hateful stuff.

Ah, but it works.  Think of lunatic Pastor Terry Jones’s threat to burn copies of the Koran–drawing attention to himself and his tiny congregation that he never could have attained with more conventional spiritual pursuits.  Or think of the few individuals so opposed to the Vietnam war that they self-immolated near the White House.  The smaller the numbers, the more dramatic the event has to be to get attention.

The Supreme Court is about the consider whether Westboro’s demonstrations are protected as free speech.  According to CBS (source of photo as well),

The church’s lawyer, Phelps’ daughter, Margie, says the church holds the protests to make their point that U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are punishment for Americans’ immorality, including tolerance of homosexuality and abortion, and therefore fall squarely under the protection of the First Amendment.

The plaintiff, Albert Snyder, sued for damages because of the disruption at his son’s funeral.  It’s not hard to imagine his grief and anger.

If the long route through the legal system provides slow and uncertain remedies to Westboro’s offense, others have found alternative methods.   The Patriot Guard Riders, a group that includes many veterans, rides motorcycles, at the request of families, at the funerals of servicemen.  Of late the riders have been idling aggressively to drown out intolerance, Ambreen Ali reports:

“There’s very few things on Earth louder than a V-Twin Harley Davidson,” said Dylan Waite, an Army first lieutenant and Patriot Guard volunteer who used his car alarm to contribute to the noise.

 

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The Numbers Trap

Posted on October 4, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Well, yes, size matters, but it’s not the only thing.

Large labor unions, the NAACP, and hundreds of other groups from the center to the left of American politics, staged their demonstration, a March for One Nation Working Together, Saturday.  Although activists estimated 175,000 the New York Times suggested the turnout might have been less than that:

Significant areas of the National Mall that had been filled during Mr. Beck’s rally were empty. In a broadcast on Thursday, Mr. Beck criticized the liberals’ march, saying his supporters paid their own way to drive to Washington, while labor unions chartered hundreds of buses to ferry demonstrators to Saturday’s rally.

Of course, the unions used their resources to build a turnout at the rally.  Beck is more than a little disingenuous in not acknowledging that his partisans did the same.  In addition to publicizing his rally on Fox, groups like Americans for Prosperity chartered buses to his rally.  (Recall that CBS estimated, with aerial photos, 87,000 at Beck’s rally.)

Organizers always try to make a statement with a large turnout, and the sheer number of rallies makes it harder and harder to generate that large turnout.  This fall, we’ve seen: Beck’s “Restore Honor” rally, FreedomWorks’ smaller Tea Party rally (9/12) (to the right), the One America rally, and the upcoming Comedy Central (Stewart/Colbert) rally.

Some union activists and Democratic partisans have criticized Stewart/Colbert for undermining their efforts to generate turnout for their rally, and potentially for undermining get out the vote efforts before the election.  And some Tea Partiers criticized Beck for stealing their thunder and undermining their turnout–and staging an event that was weak on explicit politics.  They realized that media coverage would focus on the size of the rally.

The focus on size, mostly shared by activists, puts activists in a box.  A large turnout makes it harder to hold another rally on the mall, because a smaller turnout will be read as a sign of a fading movement.

And generating people at those rallies takes lots of time, money, and effort.  Obviously, publicizing the event is a big deal, but even more difficult is coordinating logistics of sound, stage, security, and transport.

Although the turnout matters, more important is the larger effort in which the rally plays a part.  (I think of large rallies as punctuation marks in larger campaigns.)   If participants go home and organize other campaigns, a rally is a success.  If the event itself overshadows everything else, and neither message nor activism continues, it’s a sideshow.

The 1963 March on Washington, which featured ML King’s “I have a dream speech” came in the middle of a much broader and diverse set of campaigns for civil rights, which included civil disobedience, demonstrations, lawsuits, legislative lobbying, and electoral efforts.  The Dream had resonance because of everything else around it.

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The Lunch Counter

Posted on October 2, 2010 by David S. Meyer

A piece of the actual Woolworth’s lunch counter from Greensboro has a place at the National Museum of American History, in Washington, DC.

When I visited this past August, the Smithsonian was running a simulation of the nonviolence training sessions that activists conducted to prepare people for high risk activism.  (It was great.)  Such training sessions are typical for groups staging direct action campaigns.  They want to build courage, community, and discipline.

I saw people sporting tee-shirts from the Glenn Beck demonstration, and wondered about their responses to this kind of activism, to say nothing of the long history of campaigns for racial justice in America.

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