Glenn Beck and his 912 Project

[pyat]

Speaking of Glenn Beck (who I'd not heard of before today), he sounds more and more like a dork. I refer you to his 912 Project, 9 Principles and 12 Values he says all Americans should live by.

Edit: Many of these are perfectly laudable principles, though some of them contradict each other, and coming from Glenn Beck many of the rest are horribly hypocritical.

Nine Principles
1. America Is Good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Don't #5 and #4 sort of conflict with each other? And I'm not sure the agnostic/Deist founding fathers would agree with #2 at all.

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Glenn Beck is also the guy who went on the air during the brush fire holocaust in Southern California a few years back and said that it was a good thing because all the traitors were burning. Nasty for sure, but also horribly ironic because the counties involved were some of the most heavily Republican in the state. So, I think that shows his empathy, basic human decency, knowledge of demographics and the fact that he does not actually believe in #8.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

He believes in #8 for himself, but God help you if your personal opinion is something that fits his (extremely broad) definition of traitorous.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

A few things I find interesting: That honesty is more important than charity (I think the New Testament basically has it the other way around.) That family is sacred, but can be defined by government (via marriage and adoption laws) which then doesn't have authority over it. That the government works for him, individually, rather than the people, collectively. That people who do not agree with his principles, based on other things he's said, are denied the right to #8 (which is one of the few I agree with completely.)

[toad-hall.livejournal.com]

you know i kind of believe in #3 but then my knee-jerk reaction to that one when said aloud is that it's justification for the person saying it to be a douche. which he is.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

A few of them are definitely worthwhile, and indeed all of them might be laudable... coming from a different person than Glenn Beck!

[paka.livejournal.com]

Grr.

1. America is only good if the citizens make it good. Although I suppose that's a faith versus works question, where if you believe the USA is good no matter what...
2. I believe in something, and it's damn well not this guy's god.
3. I can dig that. Now let's see the conservatives live up to that one.
4. The family is sacred. That means health care for the old people, education for the kids, hope for the working adults, marriage for all. As usual, conservatives are not truly pro-life. They're pro-existence.
5. Really. Good. Let's see that start applying to the people responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq. Let's see that one start applying to the people responsible for the deaths of hundreds in New Orleans and the probable deaths of hundreds in New York.
6. I can dig it.
7. I work hard. There are thousands upon thousands of people who work harder and for less in this country. This shitwipe doesn't know what working hard is. And I agree that the government can't force me to be charitable - taking tax revenue and putting it into building a better and stronger country isn't charity. It's a service.
8. Agreed. Funny how conservatives are great at mouthing the correct stuff until it's time to start questioning and demanding justice of their side.
9. That's the theory. I should very much like a government which answered to me and mine, rather than to the will of the oil companies, the coal companies, the big churches, and a myriad others. I'll believe it when I see it.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

As usual, conservatives are not truly pro-life. They're pro-existence.

I'm stealing this.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

912 is I guess some kind of cutesy successor to 9/11, which is itself a strong hint as to how middlebrow this guy's thinking (or lack of it) is.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. He explicitly states that he wants Americans to feel like they did on 9/12.

You know, unified by pants-wetting terror?

[relee.livejournal.com]

Didn't you get the memo? They've revised history so that America is a Christian State now! Also, the Pyramids were built by Aliens, and Atlantis never existed! *giggle*

Folks who suggest that the american founding fathers were agnostic or Deist are called 'revisionists' as if they're the ones making shit up.

And after all, if America WASN'T a Christian nation, God would have smote it from the earth, so therefore history MUST be wrong! Geez. XD

getting a little pedantic:

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

I think Thomas Jefferson was (famously?) a Deist, but most of the other founding fathers were at least churchgoers (as pillars of communities tended, and still tend, to be), which doesn't exactly guarantee that they were "good" Christians, or believing Christians- just that they were practicing Christians. I don't think ANY of them were remotely close to belief systems similar to today's American Evangelicals, though that type of beliver was around at the time. There were a lot of founding fathers.
I'm just a history buff, but I don't have a stake in whether or not most or all of the "fathers" were believers or atheists/agnostics. Who counts as a founding father, and who doesn't, anyway? Just the politicians in Philly? How about the revolutionaries in Boston?

Re: getting a little pedantic:

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, my note about tha agnostic and deist ones meant THOSE ones, whomever they were. :) I presume a lot of them were also at least nominally Christians.

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a selfish jerk, and I noticed #4 and #5 being incompatible things too.

[kesmun.livejournal.com]

My dad has become one of those people who I can't understand. "Obama scares the hell out of me." he says. Direct quote. Basically, he's one of those who is convinced that Obama's plan is to take the money of anyone who is making any via taxes and throw it who knows where.

Me, I'm all about "I'm happy to pay slightly higher taxes, even though I'm actually not at the income level where that's likely. Because my freedoms are far less likely to be restricted."

I'm free to have the county bear the burden of gathering evidence to put someone who rapes me in prison, rather than having to pay for my own rape kit, as has happened under the candidate he supports.

I'm free to decide what's best for my own body, be that taking birth control or even getting an abortion, should I choose, even though the idea is personally abhorrent to me.

Most importantly, I'm slowly being freed from the idea that obvious wealth is a sign of favour from God or a sign that I've "worked hard" or done something good. It's simply a result of the combination of having good choices presented to me and taking advantage of those good options. There are far too many people who don't have those good options presented to them, and so can't take advantage of them. True Christian (in the sense of being like the Jesus written about in the Gospels accepted as canonical by mainstream denominations) charity is helping not only the ones who haven't had good opportunities, but also the ones who've chosen to not take those opportunities, or chosen badly. This is how #6 pisses me off. Glenn Beck and people who agree with him will say that "I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results." but their-idea-of-God forbid that if equal results aren't there for all to see it isn't evidence that you've been lazy or somehow deficient in your pursuit of those rights.