Paymasters of the right AN OUTSIDERS VIEW Ken Fuller 09/14/2010

Paymasters of the right

AN OUTSIDERS VIEW

Ken Fuller

09/14/2010
Last month saw a large gathering in Washington as Glenn Beck, a right-wing rabble-rouser on the odious Fox channel, called a rally at the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I have a dream” speech 47 years earlier. Beck says it was mere coincidence that it was the anniversary of the King speech but that, when he realized it, he decided to use this as his theme. And he did, making the ludicrous claim that his Tea Party audience was heir to the civil rights movement.

Anyone listening to Beck for the first time might have come away with the impression that here was a man who believed that the solution to the USA’s problems lay in the embrace of God and constant prayer. Scoundrels often enlist God in their attempts to win a following for their dubious undertakings, and Beck threw in all the icons — not just God but the founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln, the Constitution, etc.

In reality, of course, Beck has a quite different agenda. Last year in the New York Times, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called him “Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism.”

The Beck agenda is pretty much the same of that of the Tea Party, a loosely-organized movement which takes its name from the event in 1773 when American colonists threw cases of tea, upon which the British government was demanding a tax, into Boston’s harbor. “No taxation without representation” was the cry. Current Tea Party adherents, though, seem to object to paying any tax intended to fund socially desirable projects like welfare — and, of course, “bailouts,” where they might be on stronger ground..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100914com5.html