Glenn Beck may hate socialism and communism, but he showed he shares a materialistic worldview with Marx, Engels and Saul Alinsky in a recent conversation with Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly and Beck were discussing a ruling by an openly homosexual judge overturning the will of California voters who approved Proposition 8, a statewide ballot measure prohibiting same-sex marriage.
O'Reilly: "Do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?"
Beck: "A threat to the country?"
O'Reilly: "Yeah, is it going to harm it in anyway?"
Beck: "No, I don't. Will the gays come and get us?"
O'Reilly: "No, OK. Is it going to harm the country?"
Beck: "I believe that Thomas Jefferson said: 'If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket what difference is it to me?'"
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There you have it. Beck doesn't care about one of the most blatant and despicable examples of judicial tyranny in the history of our country. He doesn't care about the institution of marriage and its 5,000- year history. He doesn't care that the Bible says God created marriage way back in Genesis and that Jesus affirmed that. He doesn't care that the family is the building block of a society and that smarter men have explained how you simply can't have freedom and self-governance without it. He also doesn't seem to care about what might become of children adopted into such unions.
That, my friends, is the perfect illustration of what's wrong with the materialist worldview – whether it is held by a raving Marxist or a conservative entertainer.
So striking was the ultra-libertarian viewpoint expressed by Beck, it prompted the Washington Post to ask the question: "Is Glenn Beck a gay-marriage advocate?"
I don't think anyone has yet been able to offer a definitive answer – though it seems clear he is not an opponent, nor has he expressed any concern about the constitutional questions raised by the way the proposition was overturned.
Why?
Because he doesn't see any economic impact from the decision.
That, of course, is extremely shortsighted thinking.
But materialists like Beck don't understand how upsetting God's order can have far-reaching effects much more devastating even than a tax increase.
I would suggest that many of the dire economic problems we face today are a direct result not of government fiscal policies but of government social engineering.
It was single parenthood, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan first observed, that fractured the black community. Now it is a major cause of economic dislocation in all communities. Might not the redefinition of marriage have similar unforeseen economic consequences? None that Beck anticipates. Is Beck serious that he only cares about physical or material consequences to government actions? I suspect so.
This is a view that has more currency today, sadly, than ever before – especially in so-called "conservative" circles. Increasingly, "conservatives" see themselves living in an exclusively material world with no immutable laws and no absolute morality other than the superiority of the free market.
I've been warning about this. It's why I wrote "The Tea Party Manifesto." It's why Republican government hasn't been much different from Democratic government. It's a very selfish and, at the same time, self- defeating perspective.
I admire Thomas Jefferson as much as the next guy, but this quotation Beck cites is hardly indicative of his entire worldview. It's completely out of context. Jefferson had a libertarian streak, but he was no materialist. Jefferson also wrote a law calling for the castration of sodomites, as "gays" were known in the 18th century. I wonder why Beck didn't cite that quote?
Libertarian materialism is much in vogue these days. But, understand this: It is hardly an antidote to socialist materialism. You can't defeat one morally bankrupt ideology with another morally bankrupt ideology.
