Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck: The Redemptive Story of America's Favorite Political Commentator
$9.95
love glenn beck! glenn tells it like it is and is not afraid to speak the truth!

The Christmas Sweater
$19.99
SUCH A MEANINGFUL STORY! MY CHILDREN LOVED IT! WE JUST CUDDLE IN THE LIVING ROOM, AND I READ IT. WE SHARE COMMENTS ABOUT THE PICTURES SO BEAUTIFULLY DONE, AND THE STORY. THANKS AGAIN GLENN BECK! GOD BLESS YOU!

The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book
$17.99
I love Glen beck, but there was nothing special about this book to me. It seemed like an average christmas book. The pictures were very nice, but I think it would be best to borrow it from the library instead of buying it.

Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine
$11.99
On a whim, I bought Glenn Beck's book (paperback) because it looked like one that could be read in the car (while my inamorata was buying shoes), or easily read in the bathroom. I discovered I could do both, just not the easily part. (Don't try and return this at Brentano's if you're George Alexander).

Mr. Beck presents his views on the government, money, taxes, the political class, the perks and privileges of the same, progressivism, our future possibilities and the 9/12 Project. He covers these topics in a mere 111 pages. Thomas Payne's "Common Sense," Beck's inspiration for the book, follows. Including his sources, the book manages to creep up to 174 pages.

He describes Republican and Democrat politicians as the political elite, that they are not interested in the welfare of the American people, and feel their office is essentially their birthright. He turns on those he calls progressives from Republican Theodore Roosevelt to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. He chastises Roosevelt for appropriating some of the most beautiful country on earth as national parks, and he charges Wilson, or at least as far back as him, for putting a productive education system on a misguided philosophy of teacher-student relationships that doesn't work and causes our students to fail. His central theme is that government is bad, corrupt, inept and constantly looks for new ways to rob citizens of their personal liberty by controlling more and more of their lives from education to guns, and that the free enterprise system is the only guarantor of liberty and wealth.

The author's writing is easy to read and his concepts are easy to grasp. I found myself agreeing with him regarding the misuse of eminent domain that is given to private developers instead of being given over for the public welfare. Unfortunately, this is all I can give him credit for.

Beck uses the term, "Common sense tells us..." to death. By page 40, it had the same effect of being in a car listening to kiddies singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," kids who were determined to go to zero. To be sure, Beck's idea of common sense is from his own frame of reference rather than consensus. He also sounded like a manic cheerleader going: America! America! Rah, rah, rah, sis-coom-bah! "Stand together!" "Rise up against the political elites." "Don't let them take your guns!" In all this cheerleading, Glenn Beck tells you what to do, with everything except pom-poms, but doesn't tell you how to do it. Some of his writing could be downright patronizing, and his message is pure "teabag." Equally annoying were his quotes without references or those tiny little superscript numbers, which would have allowed me to verify its context more easily. I got the sense of a sophist with little imagination or depth.

Even though he decries extremism in any form, he has associated with, and even praised extremists on his program such as Michael Hill, the founder of the white supremacist League of the South; Thomas Naylor, a secessionist, head of the Second Vermont Republic, and Tom Woods who wrote the "Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," which proclaims that the Civil War didn't exist--it was the War for Southern Independence or the War of Northern Aggression. Woods even filled in for Beck when he had his appendix removed. (Maybe they should put it back in)?

The most disturbing thing in Beck's writing was what he said about Progressives whom he describes by how they think, how patient they are at getting what they want (your liberties), and what they are trying to do (control you), and how subtle they are trying to do it (taking away your guns). It sounds like there has been a secret cabal from T. R. Roosevelt handed down to Hillary Clinton, and if Beck is so attuned to how Progressives think and ask, I have to ask, how does he know? Was he even sneakier at infiltrating their meetings and thought processes than he claims they are? e.g. a deep-seated hatred of white people. Such collective attribution sounds paranoid. If he is not paranoid, it appears he is attempting to inflict it on his readers. Neither possibility appears healthy, and I don't remember Thomas Paine's writings inspiring such paranoia or distrust of government.

Glenn Beck is a very influential voice in American media, but I cannot imagine how this book will increase that influence except for the completely ignornant and insecure. If you are still not sure if you should buy this, stand in your living room, close your eyes, and click your heels and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat: "Common sense tells us."

If you can do that fifty times, you've read at least half the book already.