How 1950s Extremist Ideology Influenced Glenn Beck

[RamboLiberal]

In the Oct. 18 issue of The New Yorker, historian Sean Wilentz examines "how extremist ideas held at bay for decades inside the Republican Party have exploded anew — and why, this time, party leaders have done virtually nothing to challenge those ideas, and a great deal to abet them."

Wilentz, who teaches at Princeton University, argues that the rhetoric expressed by both conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck and the Tea Party is nothing new — and is rooted in an extremist ideology that has been around since the Cold War, a view that the Republican Party is now embracing.

"I think what's happening is the Republican Party is willing to chase after whatever it can to get the party back — to get power back," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "This is what's happening in the Republican Party, so instead of drawing lines, they're jumping over fences to look like they're in the good graces of these Tea Party types."

Wilentz says Beck, who has emerged as a unifying figure and intellectual guide for the Tea Party movement, finds fodder for his Fox News Channel and syndicated radio shows in the ideas espoused by the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative political group founded in 1958 that, Wilentz writes, "became synonymous with right-wing extremism."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130534982

[Democrats_win]

1. Interesting. Surprise, Beck doesn't know sh*t about history.

[stopbush]

2. Ha ha! He called Beck an "intellectual guide." Intellectual. Now, THAT'S funny!

[louis-t]

3. 1950's extremist ideology is what kept the Republican Party

in the minority for 40 years. With the inevitable crumbling of the teabagger movement, it should be another 40 before they have any real power again.

[VioletLake]

4. He's a disciple of the W. Cleon Skousen school of misinformation. nt

[JohnWxy]

5. I think when he was a baby he was dropped on his head and then dribbled down the street.