I don’t know why it should surprise me that Glenn Beck doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but you’d think that if you had a furious grudge against someone who died 40 years before you were born, you would spend at least a little time finding out what exactly was wrong with that historical figure. But then, as Tom Frank explains in a subscribers-only column in the Wall Street Journal (3/10/10), you’re not Glenn Beck:
Consider how Mr. Beck, the popular host of a Fox News program, began his performance at CPAC: “Hello. Please. Thank you. Please be seated. I have to tell you, I hate Woodrow Wilson with everything in me. God bless you.”
Now, deploring the works of the 28th president is not a new thing at CPAC. But Mr. Beck has developed a theory of progressivism that he illustrated by listing the many tyrannical misdeeds of the Wilson administration: “he gives us the Fed.” “He gives us the income tax.” And then, a confusing few sentences later, “Prohibition. So he took away the alcohol. Progressive plan to take care of everyone.” It’s easy to see how all of these villainies might come together in the mind of a freedom-fighting CPAC attendee: Progressives were the original big-government sinners; prohibition, which was backed by some progressives, was the classic example of misguided governmental overreach; Wilson, who was a progressive, was president when prohibition passed; ergo, prohibition must be added to the list of offenses that will keep Wilson in freedom purgatory for eons.But the neat pattern does not hold. As it happens, Woodrow Wilson was not a prohibitionist. He even vetoed the 1919 Volstead Act, which enforced the 18th Amendment’s prohibition of intoxicating liquors. (Congress overrode his veto.) By contrast, the laissez-faire hero Calvin Coolidge, whom Mr. Beck praised at CPAC, signed the 1929 Jones Act, which beefed up prohibition enforcement. Meanwhile, arch-progressive Franklin Roosevelt got prohibition repealed in 1933.
Glenn Beck should change the title of his new book Arguing With Idiots to Jeff Dunham’s Comedy Central show titled Arguing With Myself
Callvin Coolidge might be better off without friends like this Mr. Beck I’ve been hearing so much about. It would be worth your while — and Beck’s — to compare Al Smith’s record as Governor with Calvin Coolidge’s tenure in Massachusetts 1919 – 1921. It would be hard to tell which man was the most progressive.
Coolidge would have favored the Jones Act because it was Constitutional and supported an Amendment to that document. Personally, Coolidge regarded Prohibition as “a bad law” but, because it was Law — he observed it.
Woodrow Wilson was a racist.
Also of interest: Wilson ran for his second term on the slogan, “He kept us out of the war”, ie WWI, raging in Europe. Then, once elected, he broke that promise, instituted a draft and took on other dictatorial “war powers” not unlike those taken under the Patriot Act. Why don’t the Becks recognize these war powers as tyrannical and quite comparable to the behavior of Bush and Obama?
Re: “Why don’t the Becks recognize these war powers as tyrannical and quite comparable to the behavior of Bush and Obama?”
That would involve critical thought, which Beck and his bewildered herd of followers lack in spades. And, it would involve showing more than implied ‘balance’ and actually showing depth to an issue. Showing depth doesn’t get Beck the emotional response from his rhetoric that he craves and keeps viewers watching the commercials that pay for his show.
“The Politics of War” by Walter Karp, Harper & Row 1980 and 1981,
Franklin Square Press 2003
Taft, Cleveland, McKinley, Wilson and the difference between publicly announced and privately designed policies.
US power principle: seeking foreign war to disable domestic reforms.