Whoever predicted that books would die in the age of electronics
certainly got it all wrong! The information age sells books.
Right-wing preachers get rich selling books.
An amazing number of people buy the latest
keys to unlocking the secrets of the universe,
a phantasmagoric new way to read the Bible,
or how to hold your tongue just right so that
Attila the Hun or Jesus or maybe even God
can slip the latest hallucinogen down your throat.
What did we used to have in there before
that egomaniac out west somewhere filled
our empty lives with purposeful purpose?
Now it is Glenn Beck who has discovered a book.
Another religious screwball, of course!
His name is (was) W. Cleon Skousen. He was a Mormon,
but even the Mormons finally disowned him. Not Glenn Beck.
He wrote several books, one of which is The Five Thousand
Year Leap. He supported the John Birch Society, and
thought Dwight Eisenhower was a conscious agent
of the communist conspiracy. Mostly, he tried to rewrite
American history to make it seem that our nation was founded
as a specifically Christian nation, and that we have lost our way.
The founders of our nation were, for the most part, Deists,
who admired French and English philosophers. Most of them
believed in a god, more or less, but a god who pretty much
gets out of the way of people founding nations,
or fooling around. (Benjamin Franklin comes to mind.)
It is not accurate to say that the founders of our country
were not religious. They were, but in the same way
that people today often affirm that there is probably a god,
but don't worry about it too much; not so much it matters.
They believed there was a moral imperative to their actions,
but that only meant that they distinguished good from bad.
They certainly did not intend to shape an Anglican nation,
not a Lutheran or Catholic nor even specifically Christian nation.
They did intend a godly nation, best explained by the ideals
of what we see later in the Constitution, and in the French
and English revolutions. They let specific denominations
live and let live. They weren't anti-Semitic, or anti-whatever-
you-wanted-to-be. It was a civil religion, with polite god-talk,
now and then, as the occasion and pomp and circumstance
seemed to call for. There were self-evident truths;
call them a natural order of the universe, if you wished.
That isn't what W. Cleon Skousen said!
W. Cleon Skousen's notion of what the nation should be
was what he tried to enforce when he was Police Chief
of Salt Lake City for four years. The rock-ribbed,
J. Bracken Lee, fired him for trying to enforce an unbending
theology on the city. Eventually, even the right-wing,
National Review, called him a nutcase.
That is who Glenn Beck has been reading. Beck wrote
the preface for republishing his book. All those goofy
Family Values people who met in Washington are reading
Skousen and Beck! The governor of Texas is reading him!
One of the reasons why this nation, for all of its flaws
and fleas, has become as grand a place to live in as it often is,
is because we were founded as a tolerant nation
(if you don't count Women or Blacks or Native Americans).
We are trying to get that right, too. It was assumed
that most people were Christians, but not necessarily.
We are not a theocracy! We aren't a Mormon nation,
or a Muslim nation. Neither are we a Catholic or
a Presbyterian nation. We aren't an Old Testament nation.
People like Glenn Beck are dancing the Republican Party
off to a very strange Garden of Imaginary Eden. Sarah Palin
participated in a ceremony casting out demons, for pity's sake!
The Republicans who remain quote Bible verses when they meet!
They want to go where W. Cleon Skausen was, where
Glenn Beck is! Skausen was mad! Beck is! Or, if not mad,
then the pitiful and dangerous results of self-delusion and
of re-writing history to make the worst of evangelicals
deliriously happy. They are conspiracy theorists,
reading the books of older, discredited conspiracy theorists.
Nut-cases! Bonkers! They're Bonkers!
certainly got it all wrong! The information age sells books.
Right-wing preachers get rich selling books.
An amazing number of people buy the latest
keys to unlocking the secrets of the universe,
a phantasmagoric new way to read the Bible,
or how to hold your tongue just right so that
Attila the Hun or Jesus or maybe even God
can slip the latest hallucinogen down your throat.
What did we used to have in there before
that egomaniac out west somewhere filled
our empty lives with purposeful purpose?
Now it is Glenn Beck who has discovered a book.
Another religious screwball, of course!
His name is (was) W. Cleon Skousen. He was a Mormon,
but even the Mormons finally disowned him. Not Glenn Beck.
He wrote several books, one of which is The Five Thousand
Year Leap. He supported the John Birch Society, and
thought Dwight Eisenhower was a conscious agent
of the communist conspiracy. Mostly, he tried to rewrite
American history to make it seem that our nation was founded
as a specifically Christian nation, and that we have lost our way.
The founders of our nation were, for the most part, Deists,
who admired French and English philosophers. Most of them
believed in a god, more or less, but a god who pretty much
gets out of the way of people founding nations,
or fooling around. (Benjamin Franklin comes to mind.)
It is not accurate to say that the founders of our country
were not religious. They were, but in the same way
that people today often affirm that there is probably a god,
but don't worry about it too much; not so much it matters.
They believed there was a moral imperative to their actions,
but that only meant that they distinguished good from bad.
They certainly did not intend to shape an Anglican nation,
not a Lutheran or Catholic nor even specifically Christian nation.
They did intend a godly nation, best explained by the ideals
of what we see later in the Constitution, and in the French
and English revolutions. They let specific denominations
live and let live. They weren't anti-Semitic, or anti-whatever-
you-wanted-to-be. It was a civil religion, with polite god-talk,
now and then, as the occasion and pomp and circumstance
seemed to call for. There were self-evident truths;
call them a natural order of the universe, if you wished.
That isn't what W. Cleon Skousen said!
W. Cleon Skousen's notion of what the nation should be
was what he tried to enforce when he was Police Chief
of Salt Lake City for four years. The rock-ribbed,
J. Bracken Lee, fired him for trying to enforce an unbending
theology on the city. Eventually, even the right-wing,
National Review, called him a nutcase.
That is who Glenn Beck has been reading. Beck wrote
the preface for republishing his book. All those goofy
Family Values people who met in Washington are reading
Skousen and Beck! The governor of Texas is reading him!
One of the reasons why this nation, for all of its flaws
and fleas, has become as grand a place to live in as it often is,
is because we were founded as a tolerant nation
(if you don't count Women or Blacks or Native Americans).
We are trying to get that right, too. It was assumed
that most people were Christians, but not necessarily.
We are not a theocracy! We aren't a Mormon nation,
or a Muslim nation. Neither are we a Catholic or
a Presbyterian nation. We aren't an Old Testament nation.
People like Glenn Beck are dancing the Republican Party
off to a very strange Garden of Imaginary Eden. Sarah Palin
participated in a ceremony casting out demons, for pity's sake!
The Republicans who remain quote Bible verses when they meet!
They want to go where W. Cleon Skausen was, where
Glenn Beck is! Skausen was mad! Beck is! Or, if not mad,
then the pitiful and dangerous results of self-delusion and
of re-writing history to make the worst of evangelicals
deliriously happy. They are conspiracy theorists,
reading the books of older, discredited conspiracy theorists.
Nut-cases! Bonkers! They're Bonkers!
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