I’ve never been a fan of Glenn Beck. He is prone to hyperbole, has a bizarre grasp of history, and as someone whose job it is to speak four hours a day, can play fast and loose with his lips. That said, the evil that the Left ascribes to this man is itself exaggerated, and the sheer fear with which they approach him is a source of much hilarity.

For all his professional faults, I admire the story of his personal renewal. Americans love a comeback story, even when we’re not privy to see the trainwreck. It is his rise from alcoholism that informs Glenn Beck’s politics and world view. It’s no secret that he is a Mormon, and yet he does not preach Mormonism on his show. Yes, there are strong religious undertones, but what do you expect from a man who has his newfound faith to thank for his survival?

When he organized the Restoring Honor rally this past Saturday, the Left went ballistic. It happens to be the anniversary of MLK‘s speech, and to the Left, this was their day. To them, the idea that Glenn Beck would hold a rally of white people, whom they consider nothing more than racists and bigots, was so offensive it was unacceptable. The sheer vitriol the Left felt towards their fellow Americans was astounding, but not surprising. They have disdained the Right for a very long time.

I’ve never been a fan of Glenn Beck. There’s a subset of his audience that is uncritical of his words and adopts his ideas as gospel truth. This is not his fault, considering that every pundit and two-bit philosopher in the media has their fair share of sheep. But I like how his Restoring Honor rally was not about following his ideas, but a gathering of people in need of fellowship.

Of course, the Left was seen sarcastically wondering whether the “Honor” Beck wants to restore was code for such past sins as slavery, segregation and the racism that inspired those situations. The Left was seen mocking the crowd that day, as they do every day anyway. But the rally itself was not about the Left. This was not a campaign rally, to promote Beck’s anointed candidates. Even their special guest, Sarah Palin, wasn’t speaking in partisan terms.

What wasthe Honor that Beck wanted for so many to restore? Doctor Zero has a few ideas. This was a rally that aimed for a personal and spiritual restoration for the people who attended, that they may bring their experiences that day back home, to share with their loved ones and neighbors.

I’m not quite sure whether we can measure his success, but even if the low estimate of three hundred thousand people went back home and tried to start change with themselves first, and reach out to the neighbors around them, then that’s three hundred thousand minor evangelists, not for a religion but for a movement of ideas.

I have heard of this 9-12 project, which ties in closely with Glenn Beck’s show and has been adopted the various Tea Party organizations. I think this movement, one borne on ideas and values, scares the Left, because it competes with them, not in terms of policy proposals, but with values and principles. Anyone (yes, despite the use of capital-G God) can be a part of it. The Left, along with belligerent atheists, would have you believe that one is unwelcome in such a schema. They are after all, competing for your attention and world view.

So why the title, then? Am I calling Beck a paragon? A charlatan? He is a little bit of both but also completely neither, at least by definition. What he might be is the man who helps us realize what we need, as a country (and no, it’s not to buy gold).

We have been, since the Bush election, a nation hurting for healing and catharsis. The 2000 election was so acrimonious that the country has been in a contentuous state since then. The 9/11 attacks, the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the numerous politcal scandals have done little to help bring our country together. When our current president ran for office, he tried to sell that uniter schtick. I didn’t buy it, but enough people did and he is where he is now.

There is a terrible sense of buyer’s remorse, though. Moderate Republicans and Libertarians who broke for him in 2008 will unlikely vote for him today. He broke promises to his base, while enacting enough of his Leftist agenda to lull a large number of people while simultaneously inciting his enemies. The healer-in-chief never materialized, and with every issue, he stands behind his lectern, wagging his finger at us on every issue imaginable, whether it’s race relations or the Ground Zero Mosque.

Our president sold himself as a paragon and yet is nothing more than a charlatan. Now, we are faced with the temptation to find paragons wherever we can find them, when in fact the more important thing is to decentralize our hopes and aspirations over many public servants. Take this conclusion by Smitty (emphasis mine):

Here is something of a conclusion: let us be as forgiving as genuine repentance allows, but, more importantly, strive to diminish the importance of individuals in running the government, so that the negative impact of personal failings is reduced.

I’ve never been a fan of Glenn Beck, but if, in examining him, we realize that it’s time we stopped looking for paragons and instead started making paragons out of ourselves, then he’d have made a great contribution in improving politics for all of us.

Last night on his blog, Greg Gutfeld—in verbiage reminiscent of the Cordoba Initiative’s own—announced that he plans on putting up a gay bar speicifcally marketed to gay Muslims:

I’m announcing tonight, that I am planning to build and open the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men. To best express my sincere desire for dialogue, the bar will be situated next to the mosque Park51, in an available commercial space.

This is not a joke. I’ve already spoken to a number of investors, who have pledged their support in this bipartisan bid for understanding and tolerance.

As you know, the Muslim faith doesn’t look kindly upon homosexuality, which is why I’m building this bar. It is an effort to break down barriers and reduce deadly homophobia in the Islamic world.

The proposal turned out to be quite popular among fellow Conservatives, and led to a hashtag game of proposed names for the site. Many of the names are, of course off-colour, although “Ba’ath House” is a personal favorite.

Gutfeld’s gambit is paying off. A lengthy exchange on Twitter has the official @Park51 account revising their description of the project multiple times. The Cordoba Initiative, whose website is still SEO seeded for terms including “Ground Zero,” has renamed their project from “Cordoba Mosque” to “Park 51,” after the historical significance of Cordoba, Spain and the Caliphate there was laid bare. Today, I’ve seen them call the building a “Muslim modeled YMCA or JCC with a prayer space.” (Screenshot.) The rest of @Park51‘s tweets have taken on a defensive and annoyed character. It’s as if the author forgot that people may challenge him.

This manoeuvre is even doubly effective in its timing. As I tweeted: “Gutfeld’s timing is perfect. After the Prop 8 ruling decreed tat [sic] opposition to homosexuality is bigotry, they have no wiggle room.” @Park51′s tweets in response to Gutfeld had a visible nervousness to them. Perhaps they never imagined that someone would take this line of attack. By opposing this project on the account that it may offend Muslims’ sensibilities, @Park51 has basically refused to extend the courtesy that it demanded.

Today, Greg Gutfeld checkmated Imam Rauf and his terrible Twitter operator. Everything else is detail.

Three events this week have proven the difficult times ahead for us Conservatives, and I have a few thoughts on them.

NYC’s Approval of the “Ground Zero Mosque”

The Cordoba Iniative, whose funding sources for the “mega-mosque” (come on, it’s only thirteen stories, right) remain unproven, has made it clear that they will use the phrase “Ground Zero” in their SEO seeding (Google Search) and screenshot). Previous articles on their news section keeps on mentioning the World Trade Center site as one of the primary reasons for building their site.

You can imagine how many people find this offensive, right? Except if you do find it offensive, you are hereby a bigot. This is Conservatism’s first defeat this week: that opposition to this mosque on any grounds has become successfully painted as unjustifiable, irrational anti-Islamic bigotry. There is a syntactical and semantic differnce between a “mosque close to the World Trade Center site” and “Ground Zero Mosque,” so much so that Cordoba itself has renamed the project “Park 51.”

I feel no sorrow for Imam Rauf renaming his project as such, considering that he reminds me of me before my conversion to Conservatism. It was a faux pas for Rauf, and it’s a tragedy that for years now a Greek Orthodox Church has been fighting red tape to get construct their place of worship. Apparently there’s a mosque the same distance from the World Trade Center site as Rauf’s mosque, and no one’s complained. There’s also a mosque at the Pentagon, and no one’s complained.

Neither mosque has been marketed as triumphantly and as proudly as Rauf’s. That’s why no one’s complained.

Proposition 8 in California ruled unconstitutional

There is not enough room on this blog nor in my headspace to discuss this at depth, at least not with the limited time I have these days. Long and short: I like the outcome in that extending marriage to gays as a convenient and legal means of recognizing a family (albeit different from what we’re used to) makes sense. I call upon all homosexual couples to live a moral life, and form exemplary families to prove the detractors wrong.

There will be dark days ahead for this ruling. The politics of this will be far-reaching, and I do personally worry that this is going to stoke Conservative anger towards gays. Not in the sense of the violence of the era of closeted group dates, but because it would be harder for remaining gay-related political issues to be advocated for that requires broad appeal.

From an outside-looking-in perspective, Proposition 8 was a huge mistake for California Conservatives in the first place. It’s like that state is so fucked up that the only thing their politicians could think of is to use wedge issues for political gain and it has backfired royally. The worst place to advocate a gay marriage ban is a gay-friendly state like California. Proposition 8 was a myopic attempt, and politically it was on the level of the Battle of Cannae from the perspective of the Romans.

I’ve only started reading the ruling. I am dismayed by some of the judge’s statements, but they are what they are and they will be tested in the higher courts.

After five long years, Harriet Miers has finally been confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Elena Kagan’s duplicity in her senate hearings, her lack of judicial experience and her views on abortion all disqualify her in my book. Elections have consequences, and this is one of them. The Republicans who voted for her (Collins, Gregg, Lugar, Grassley, Graham) have their reasons. She would’ve been confirmed anyway. Her confirmation is a bitter reminder of what happens when your party sucks so much monkey balls you get devastated into irrelevance after a contentuous election like 2008.

We are facing at least twenty years of a Justice Kagan, and I, for one, look forward to her judicial opinions. May they be grounded in firm legal reasoning, despite her obvious partisanship. I do hope she recuses herself from cases she’s argued in the past that then makes it to the Supreme Court. In that, maybe we will be blessed with two years of an impotent justice Kagan.

So, that’s it.

The past week has been a political bloodbath for Conservatism. I call upon fellow Conservatives to act strategically and react prudently to these developments. Let’s not panic, and let’s not act in anger. Sadly, for too many, I know this is a tall order.

The outcome of every political movement follows one of three archetypes: failure, success through integration into the social fabric, and lastly, an overstay of welcome. Examples of failure and far and wide. I’d rather not list them. Success, such as the suffragette movement, has made our history of not giving women the vote an embarrassing afterthought.

And then we have the overstayers, the ones who after success or failure just haven;t learned to go away for some reason. As time marches on, these movements and the organizations around them lose their way. They end up losing sight of the goal, branching beyond their original missions, sometimes into self-parody.

Advocacy groups need to know when to bow out or reassess their raison d’etre. Recently, some chapters of the Log Cabin Republicans (for whom I’ve done design work, just as a disclaimer) have engaged in actions that go beyond the stated mission of advancing gay rights. They’ve aligned with Liberals in promoting Liberal policies, instead of remembering that they are a Republican group, or even, a group of Republicans.

Today’s news is that a woman by the name of Shirley Sherrod, in a speech to members of the NAACP, recounts her experience in giving aid to a white farmer back in 1986. Her own words, as reported by Fox News, from a video by Andrew Breitbart:

“He had to come to me for help. What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him,” she said. “I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land — so I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough.”

The discussion on Twitter has been going on all day. It’s gone from acrimonious to intellection and everything in between. One of the more…polite exchanges I’ve had was with Jim Keenan, who wrote a very thoughtful post. In it, among the many important points he makes, he notes that the NAACP has basically overstayed its purpose:

NAACP, your time is up. The enemy is no longer “the system.” It’s time to change your charter or shut down.

Jesse Jackson, Dan Gilbert was not being racist in expressing his feelings towards LeBron’s defection. Jesse you were, by assuming his comments were racially motivated on the sole data point that LeBron is a brother. Jesse, when the enemy was “the man,” when systematic racism was embedded in the fabric of this country, you were a leader, a deliverer of sorts and you did your job well. You pulled away “the mans” grip on the system and set the path for a black President, black CEO’s like Richard Parsons Ursula Burns and Kenneth Chenault and for that I thank you and we area all indebted to you. But, it is now time stop. Your approach is outdated. It is ineffective and misaligned. It could be argued, your outdated approaches are setting us back as they continue to operate from the fact the system is racist. This assumption is offensive to the millions of white Americans who aren’ racist, those who support diversity and have been part of the solution for years. Enough Jessee, the NAACP, and my fellow brothers and sisters who are still angry and are fighting yesterdays fight.

“Fighting yesterday’s fight.” I like that. I didn’t grow up in America, and bigotry in the Philippines is more fueled by social status, familial pedigree and regionalism. We studied the history of the USA, though, and I find the concept of race relations in this country both boggling, fascinating and annoying. Because of the constant flux between populations, people moving in and around the country, different values are shared amongst different groups of people.

Today’s race relations are different from those as recent as 1986, and the speed by which information exchanges will change race relations even more so, and faster. Back in 1984 (IIRC) my mother went on a trip to San Francisco with a friend and his family. When they entered a department store, a sales associate shadowed them at every turn, watching closely, making sure she and her friend didn’t steal anything. Never mind the fact that my mom’s friend happened to be the wife of a Philippine Member of Parliament. The reputation of my people at the time was that we’re far from trustworthy. When I moved to the States in 2001, I never experienced that, not even from the most insular “rednecks” in Maryland.

Groups still believe in, and exhibit, stereotypes and archetypes. I’ve personally observed Asians’ and Hispanics’ attitudes towards African Americans and I can say that the relationships between these many groups have a long way to go. That said, I believe that if there’s one thing that can help us get together, beyond groups and racial designations is that we are all Americans. It’s the whole point of being in America! We have immigration problems in Arizona and other states because (in part), legal or not, a large number of immigrants do not see themselves as American. We need to promote this value, and I think that the current trends on how we treat the concept of diversity needs reexamining.

Shirley Sherrod may very well be the victim of her own unfortunate verbiage. She may have openly admitted to racist thoughts, and a decision, twenty-four years ago, based on race. Take all that, and consider that Shirley Sherrod is no more a victimizer as she is a reminder that we have a long way to go to be at our best.

The lines are drawn: General McChrystal’s insubordination has divided Conservatives between those who find his actions unacceptable, and those who excuse his actions to further the broader narrative of an incompetent president.

The facts are simple. Obama is still President and Commander-in-Chief, McChrystal is still a general. The CiC still calls the shots and grievances in the military are still carried through the chain of command. Talking to the press like this is a violation of this protocol. I dislike Obama, and have made it clear in the many posts I have written on my blog, but I dislike what’s going on with McChrystal even more. You’d think that after the lessons of history from Douglas McArthur’s tiff with Truman, a contemporary general would know better, but no.

To my Conservative friends: switch some names around, look at this issue broadly, and ask yourself whether you would react this way if it were any general and the President were George W. Bush? What if Petraeus’ aides were reported on being on the record as calling the VP names, and basically calling Bush incompetent? Would you cheer? If you’re Conservative, probably not. If you’re Liberal, you probably already cheered on a critical general in the form of General Shinseki.

Friends, it’s very simple. Our military and its dynamic with the civilian leadership has to maintain a high level of professionalism that wouldn’t be found in government alone, nor in corporate life. We don’t need McChrystal’s opinion, no matter how factual, no matter how much we dislike the current President, no matter how much it works to our advantage. We need our generals to be better than Shinseki and McChrystal, and we need ourselves to be at our best so as not to promote or encourage this kind of misbehavior.