Glenn Beck is now the best-known devotee of the radical rightist Cleon Skousen. Guess who the previous one was? None other than the late Gov. Evan Mecham of Arizona. From the NYT archives:
Mecham's political career began with an end-run around his own Republican Party to win election to the State Senate in 1960. His belief that what motivated his fellow senators was striking deals rather than upholding ideals, catalyzed his revulsion for consensus politics. In his memoirs, ''Come Back America,'' published in 1982, he depicts himself as a maverick who always speaks his mind.Over the next 22 years he ran for the United States Senate and four times for Governor - all unsuccessfully. His political standards were the fiscal prudence he employed at his Pontiac dealership and the teachings of W. Cleon Skousen, founder of the Salt Lake City-based National Center for Constitutional Studies and a favorite of the John Birch Society.
Although Mecham never joined the society, he recently spoke at its annual dinner. He serves as a state director of the National Center, which published Skousen's textbook ''The Making of America,'' the source of Mecham's now-famous defense of the word ''pickaninny,'' as Skousen uses it to describe little naked black children.
From an L.A. Times profile of Mecham in 1987:
First, Mecham, 62, lived up to a campaign promise and canceled the state holiday on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, which so far has prompted eight groups scheduled to hold conventions here to cancel their events in protest.Then, he announced he would like to see a list of all homosexuals in state government. He appointed as education adviser a man who believes teachers have no right to contradict parents who tell their children that the Earth is flat.
And, below the jump, how familiar does this sound? Remember, this is from 1987:
For all its problems, critics concede that Mecham's governorship reflects something new in this state: the repudiation of the once all-powerful Republican Establishment and the rise of a new-right populism that may well extend beyond the cholla cactus and saguaro blossoms of Arizona."Mecham understands that there is a huge reservoir of people who feel anger toward the system, who think government does things to them, not for them," said Arizona House Minority Leader Art Hamilton, a Democrat.
Mecham, in his singular way, put it differently: "I'm doing things that hasn't been done before."
A college dropout who made his fortune selling Pontiacs, Mecham ran for governor four times before winning election last November.
In all five campaigns he preached the same message: This country, as he wrote in a 1982 campaign autobiography, "Come Back America," has been "led to the edge of . . . moral and economic . . . bankruptcy" by 50 years of socialism manipulated by unidentified "Master Planners."
More:
Similar problems, according to Mecham, beset American auto makers. He wrote: "Some feel that there was great conspiracy to kill off the U.S. car industry in order to kill the U.S. economy. Out of the resulting economic chaos the Socialists would finish destroying the Republic and emerge with a Socialist Dictatorship in complete control . . . . Whether it was the case, events have fit the scenario."
Ev Mecham was eventually impeached, and he died last year. Skousenism, improbably, survives him, and now has a persuasive advocate who heads a nationally televised nightly program. You wonder where people are getting these crazy ideas that a socialist conspiracy is taking over America? Now you know. Can we please see some responsible conservative leaders distancing themselves from Glenn Beck and this crackpot nonsense, instead of trying to exploit it for political gain? This is the kind of thing that is going to drive moderates and independents away, and guarantee that conservative government will stay on the margins.
UPDATE: I still find Skousen a very troubling figure, but having read most of "Leap" last night, I have changed my view of the book. Read about that here.
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I don't know how many people read the Time piece on Beck, but it does raise some info that calls into question how much of what Beck says is sincere and how much is done to make his buck:
"Last year, shortly after the election, Beck spoke with TIME's Kate Pickert, and he didn't sound very scared back then. Of Obama's early personnel decisions, he said, "I think so far he's chosen wisely." Of his feelings about the President: "I am not an Obama fan, but I am a fan of our country ... He is my President, and we must have him succeed. If he fails, we all fail." Of the Democratic Party: "I don't know personally a single Democrat who is a dope-smoking hippie that wants to turn us into Soviet Russia." Of the civic duty to trust: "We've got to pull together, because we are facing dark, dark times. I don't trust a single weasel in Washington. I don't care what party they're from. But unless we trust each other, we're not going to make it."
John Stewart also did a very funny spot showing Beck about a year and a half ago going after the health care system for being incompetent, souless, evil frauds with his current "Obama is trying to destroy the best health care system in the universe gambit:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-13-2009/glenn-beck-s-operation
Robin, did you look at the Salon article? According to the Salon article, Quigley was one of two men who reviewed "The Naked Capitalist" for Dialogue: The Journal of Mormon Thought.
In the Autumn/Winter 1971 issue of Dialogue, the two men accused Skousen of "inventing fantastic ideas and making inferences that go far beyond the bounds of honest commentary." Skousen not only saw things that weren't in Quigley's book, they declared, he also missed what actually was there -- namely, a critique of ultra-far-right conspiracists like Willard Cleon Skousen.
"This right wing freak out is about the fact that the president is an unapologetic liberal black man.
No more, no less"
Not worth response.
Recently updated report on Skousen based upon his FBI personnel file:
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/skousen
Question for Robin Thomas who wrote:
"And then read 'Tragedy and Hope' by Carrol Quigley, Bill Clinton's mentor. This stuff isn't conspiracy 'theory,' it's conspiracy fact."
Robin, since Quigley's book T&H has no footnotes and no bibliography, how did you determine it was factual?
Are you aware that Quigley explicitly described Skousen (and Gary Allen) as intellectually dishonest because of what they claimed Quigley wrote but which Quigley denied?
Are you aware that Skousen's book, The Naked Capitalist, contains numerous factual errors -- some of which are based upon anti-semitic sources?
Are you aware that Skousen never did any independent primary source research of his own --- instead, he just parroted what other authors claimed without verifying their data or documentation?
Are you aware that Skousen's superiors within the FBI explicitly stated that he was never considered an authority on communism during his FBI service -- and he was not even assigned any significant amount of internal security-related cases during his FBI employment?
More info: ernie1241@aol.com and
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/skousen
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