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Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project Idiocy

Posted on 28. Oct, 2009 by Skunk Ape in Glenn Beck

I just completed a quick scan of the 9/12 website.  Go visit this page so you have an idea of what I am talking about. The only Principles that I am not crazy about are #1 and #4.

#1 “America is good.”

I’m not sure about the point of this statement. America is a polyglot, polytheist nation composed of many cultures and peoples. How is this good or bad? It is as senseless as saying that hammers are evil. Good and evil are based on intentions. Only human beings have intentions. How can a nation have intentions? Is Germany evil because of Hitler? Am I missing something?

#4 “The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.”

Authorities of what? Our children? Our house? Sure. I guess so. However, we should always accept that it is possible there is someone out there smarter than us that might know how to do things better. This just sounds like the kind of silly platitude that pretends to be substantial but is really just mentally masturbatory. 

Otherwise, the 9 Principles are fine. They are just the sort of mamby-pamby blather that makes the uneducated feel good about themselves.

However, I call your attention to something interesting. Beck claims that his 9 Principles were condensed from “The 28 Principles of Liberty” which according to Beck, are the 28 principles used by the Founding Fathers to draft the Constitution of the United States.

The only problem is that I can’t seem to find any record of these 28 Principles older than July 2004.  It seems the original source is the National Center for Constitutional Studies which is a conservative think tank. It’s pretty clear they have a religious right agenda. So how is it possible that the Founding Fathers used a document written in 2004 as the basis for the Constitution?

With just a cursory study, it is very clear that the 28 Principles are not representative of the views of the Founding Fathers.  I have studied the writings of the Founders pretty extensively over the years. I find it interesting the emphasis on religion that the 28 Principles expound when juxtaposed against the reality that most of the Founders were deists!

I especially like Principle 4 (”Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.”) followed by a quote from Washington’s farewell address. Whoever wrote that completely missed Washington’s point. GW was saying that it is possible for morality to exist without religion.

Principle 6 (All mankind were created equal) is completely false when you examine the three-fifths compromise is found in Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the US Constitution. All men might be created equal, but some are more equal than others.

Principle 9 (To protect human rights, God has revealed a code of divine law) just seems to call for the US to be an evangelical nation following fundamentalist readings of the Christian Bible in direct contradiction to the First Amendment.

Principle 12 (The United States of America shall be a republic) is nonsense. The US is a republic because the Constitution says so. Not because of the Pledge of Allegiance. Strange choice here.

Principle 14 (Life and liberty are secure only so long as the rights of property are secure) is a great example of circular logic. How does the security of property protect life and liberty? The explanation offered below is more akin to the protection of intellectual property instead of physical property. And even then, I still don’t see how it makes any damn sense. Under that logic everyone that has pirated music online has cause someones death or incarceration.

Principle 15 (The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and a minimum of government regulations) was proven false with the Great Depression. How is it that the regulations imposed on business led to the greatest growth in prosperity in history and then the dismantling of those regulations by every president after Carter has led to the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression? It’s nonsense. Pure capitalism only works for those who control capital. And I don’t care how much money you think you have, you don’t control any significant capital. I promise you. You don’t.

And finally, Principle 28 (The United States has a manifest destiny to eventually become a glorious example of God’s law under a restored Constitution that will inspire the entire human race) is just gross arrogance at it’s absolute worst. Believing that America has some Divine mandate is nothing more than hubris.

It always makes me sad when I see examples of revisionist history. While I don’t disagree with most of Beck’s 9 Principles, I have a bit of a problem with where he got them from. It’s clear he is just shilling for an ultra-conservative religious agenda.

No thanks. Not for me. But thanks anyway.