Health care, student loans and the economy are only a few renovations that are putting Washington, D.C., on the hot seat, but are American citizens really even noticing these changes? Today’s political banter appears to be so complex that Americans who work, pay bills, eat, and sleep can easily lose track of what their appointed leaders are actually doing for them. Historically, hard times such as these required tough action and an honest voice. From an anonymously published manifesto (later Thomas Paine was given his authorial credit) called “Common Sense” came a reminder to the American public that they had individual power to control and enforce the government.
Today, Americans have a new manifesto to inspire their call to action. Glenn Beck, typically known for his television show on Fox News, attempts to put some of his own common sense into our modern political system. In Beck’s manifesto, aptly named “Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government,” he insists on a rise to action against the American machine which purposefully creates mass confusion to swindle citizens out of their rights and money. He writes, “I expect Democrats to attack this book’s message and messenger because they will believe that it’s pointing fingers at them. I expect Republicans to attack the message and messenger as well for similar reasons. Both would be 100 percent accurate.”
What’s Beck’s agenda? One of the first things he discusses is his distaste for President Obama’s current non-specific details of his health care reform plan. He writes, “How many of us would make a down payment on a car that we didn’t test drive or a home we didn’t know anything about? But that’s exactly what the lunatics running Washington are now proposing.”
He doesn’t only attempt to knock some sense into our current administration or the liberal left, but he takes a few digs at our other appointed political employees as well. In response to our former president’s actions after 9/11, Beck writes, “Through their actions they taught the American people that spending money you did not have was not only reasonable, but patriotic. Our solution to September 11 was zero percent financing and a presidential call to ‘go shopping.’ Common sense tells us that you can’t solve a debt crisis with more debt or solve a spending crisis with more spending.”
But be aware, you can take Beck out of Fox News, but you can’t take Fox News out of Beck. In his attempts to chastise both political sides and appear neutral or objective, he definitely elbows the left in the ribs as often as he can. In one such instance he writes, “The enemies are at the gate, and have been for quite some time. Many ‘liberals’ have begun to call themselves ‘progressives’ instead because it sounds new and forward thinking — but the truth is that it’s anything but. It is a movement that requires Americans to sever the ties to our founding and follow an ever-evolving social gospel instead.” While Beck insists that progressives exist in both political parties, he spends quite a bit of time pointing out the faults of many liberal progressive actions.
In the end, he pulls his reader to face him, and then he explains that the entire modern system of a self-serving bigger government is a bastardization of the foundations on which America has been built: the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Use your common sense and pick this book up. This may be one of the most important books of the year.
Rating: W W W W
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