Glenn Beck

Image Credit Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-glenn-beck-nut-job-2015-10

I think Glenn Beck is a really cool guy.

     One of the my first experiences with Glenn Beck was through his radio show. I'm not much of a conservative talk radio fan, though I do try to listen occasionally, but some coworkers were listening to his show. I don't remember too many specifics from that particular day's program, but one thing has stuck with me. For whatever reason, Glenn and the other hosts were discussing the European Union. Glenn said something to the effect of "Of course the EU is evil! Have you seen the building? It looks just like the Tower of Babel! How could it be anything other than evil when it looks exactly like any painting of the Tower of Babel you have ever seen?" Now, this is an absolutely outrageous statement. I don't think that most of the people who like Glenn Beck's self described 'catastrophist' views would actually consider the apparent similarity of a painting of a mythological building and a governmental office legitimate reason to distrust the government who's office it was. That is so blatantly illogical that most people would easily throw out such an argument, however, it has the effect of legitimizing more sneaky fear mongering. It is less obviously pernicious due to the ease with which it is disputed, but in setting the bar low for what is acceptable to be published, Glenn Beck and others like him draw attention away from more subtle tricks. It is the equivalent of making an intentional and obvious spelling error in writing, to fulfill the need of the proofreader to find a mistake. Given some easy mistake or two, the critical mind feels satisfied that it has not given up easily and then is not as present for the more subtle fallacious arguments. There are so many things that he does to mislead listeners that it is difficult for me to imagine how some one thinking critically would enjoy his programming.

     Once I had heard enough of Glenn Beck to form these opinions, I pretty much wrote him off entirely. That is somewhat the point of this essay: finding the good in those we disagree with, and separating ideas from people. I have a tendency to want to judge people as a package. It seems natural for humans to look at some few aspects of a person and to use them to decide the value of anything else coming from this person. This is the definition of the ad hominem fallacy. Commentators on both sides of today's current political climate use this rampantly. Glenn Beck included. Myself included. It is logically unsound and appeals to our tribal nature. The merit of some idea A coming from person X, has little to do with person X's view on idea B; assuming that ideas A and B can be considered orthogonal (built on separate basis). Since much of today's punditry is built on ad hominem, it has been made mainstream and is often used without consideration. Even the example that I gave previously of Glenn Beck's criticism of the EU is a sort of extension of this idea. My views on Glenn Beck have definitely colored by this lens. Without actually considering the argument forward, I have dismissed many ideas simply because they were Glenn Beck related. This is not to say that they were good ideas, but that I was lazy in my consideration, biased by my view of the source. The messenger of the idea is not the idea, and I had conflated the two; perhaps throwing out the baby with bathwater.

     This brings me to the point. The moment where one could choose to throw out a valuable idea because it comes from a source that has previously been deemed untrustworthy. Glenn Beck is a champion of changing your mind. I recently listened to  a beautiful interview with him on the podcast, On Being. My first urge is just to copy and paste the entire transcript here, but that seems like a bit of a cop out. In it Glenn Beck discusses points where he has been wrong, and has alienated half of the country. Most importantly for me were finding some points where Glenn Beck and I share common elements in personal development. The point that has most mirrored my own journey is when he was asked about how he came to 'mormonism'. He and I have arrived at very different conclusions, but from this common starting point, he says:

      "So I went — in ‘96, I was just starting to — I took everything out, and I said “OK, I don’t know anything. And so I went — because I couldn’t afford college, I went to the Barnes and Noble, and I assembled what I like to call the library of a serial killer. I went in with the intention of, “Who would argue with each other in philosophy? Who would argue with each other in religion? Who would argue with each other in” — whatever it is. And so, I was putting a library together with Mein Kampf and Alan Dershowitz. I mean, crazy.

And my philosophy was, if you can go to the extremes and you can go to people that should have nothing in common, if you find any point of connection, then there’s truth in that. And it’s led me to things like — that I think is very true — horrible to say out loud, but that’s what I do for a living — Jesus and Hitler had one thing in common, and that is they could both look somebody in the eye who was hungry or in despair and say, “I will feed you.” And it’s important to listen to what their solution is, but most people don’t. And one will lead you to an evil path, and one will lead you to a good path. But it is exactly the same entry point."

     Glenn Beck has gotten to his world view through an attempt at rigorous reason.  Do I think that he has done so with perfection in that attempt? Not really. It is unreasonable to expect any person to have made no mistakes, a point Glenn made himself in the interview:

"And I did a calculation once because I lost my voice. My vocal chords went paralyzed, and they said they could come back; they might not. And I counted — what was it — 10 million words in the last x number of years that I have uttered. You can’t utter 10 million words publically and not screw up.

You’re going to screw up. You’re going to say things that you said poorly, you were wrong about, you regret, or were misconstrued or — it’s just gonna happen. We have to start believing the best in each other instead of expecting the worst. And I’m guilty. I hate to say that because I can’t imagine how many people in your audience just rolled their eyes and went, you’ve got to be — coming from Glenn Beck?"

     This willingness, even though he is clearly uncomfortable with it, to deal with his own mistakes and to try to remove his self esteem from his ideology is extremely admirable. Enough that I consider Glenn Beck to be one of my personal heroes. He has made horrible mistakes. He has said horrible things. He admits it and is trying to be better. This is an attribute that, even if he and I never were to come to a consensus on the correct view of the nature of humanity and its relation to government, on politics, or on any other matter, makes Glenn Beck an extraordinary human being.  Though I disagree with much that he has to say, I have come to appreciate the good ideas he has presented, not allowing the things that are clearly incorrect, or abhorrent, to prevent me from gleaning the good. In closing I'll let one more quote from him tie this all together:

     "Yeah, let me just say this. This is why I have — and I’ve been begging the people on the right. How can you not have empathy for the people right now who are saying, “Donald Trump is going to destroy America. We are gonna be in — he’s gonna have concentration camps?” You were thinking that about Barack Obama. How can you not understand that somebody sees this guy, who is much more vocal and has many more tendencies than the last guy, how can you call them crazy? There are people — I’m finding it fascinating that at this moment where we could have profound understanding for one another and we can say, “I know, I know, I know how you’re feeling, and don’t make the mistake that I made. Don’t do the things that we did.” “Well, nobody could be as bad as you.” Stop it. Stop it. Let’s take this moment at time and say, let’s learn from the past. Let’s not overreact and freak out. And believe me, I’m one of the — I mean, you’ve heard me over the last, what, 18 months about Donald Trump. I’m warning you, grave danger. This guy could go totalitarian on us. He could very well do that. He also may very well leave the Oval Office as a decent president. I don’t know. I can’t see the future. What we should be talking about is not people, not even events, but ideas. And the idea is no one person should ever make the American public, left, right, or all of us, this afraid"

     Amen, Glenn Beck. You have shown me an example of humility that has shown light on my personal pride and allowed me to begin to remove it and see the world with fewer illusions.

Another link to the full interview: https://onbeing.org/programs/glenn-beck-what-you-do-will-be-a-pivot-point/

P.S: This is not the first time Glenn Beck has discussed his regrets for the rhetoric he has used, just my favorite one and the one that really made me reconsider my opinion of him.

P.P.S The interviewer in the above links has a great book, Becoming Wise. Check it out!