Is Glenn Beck a pomocon?

This'll scare the sideburns offa James Poulos: Nate Silver identifies Glenn Beck as a postmodern conservative. Why? Says Silver:

Beck is a PoMoCon -- a post-modern conservative. And his philosophy is not all that difficult to articulate. It borrows a couple of things from traditional American conservatism:

-- It shares an extreme distrust for government, particularly the Federal Government.
-- It shares the notion that American society is in some sort of state of existential decline.

On the other hand, it also features some important differences:

-- It is much more distrustful of non-governmental institutions, such as labor unions, corporations, political parties, community groups, the media, and scientific institutions.
-- It is largely indifferent toward 'social issues'.
-- It is much less explicitly aligned with the Republican Party.
-- It has much less use for elites, which it also distrusts.

The PoMoCons are not so much less self-consistent as they are less concerned with consistency, as compared with traditional conservatives. Theirs is a bric-a-brac, skeptical (sometimes to the point of paranoid), play-it-by-ear, relatively spontaneous reaction to the here-and-now -- not something cooked up by a K Street thinktank. There is no future, no past -- there is only today. And today is a pretty good day to be Glenn Beck.

In other words, says Silver, Beck is an anti-establishment conservative. I see where Silver is going with this, and in some ways, especially my disaffection from the GOP and its worshipful attitude toward moneymen (an attitude shared by the establishment liberal party as well, you will note), I consider myself an anti-establishment conservative. But as Glenn Greenwald points out, Beck is a terribly flawed advocate for any kind of principled, coherent anti-establishment conservatism. Excerpt:

Ultimately, Beck himself is just a histrionic intellectual mess: willing to latch onto any hysterical accusations and conspiracy theories that provide some momentary benefit, no matter how contradictory they might be from one moment to the next. His fears, resentments and religious principles seem fixed, but not his political beliefs. Like the establishment leadership of both political parties, he has no core political principles or fixed, identifiable ideology. His description of himself as a "rodeo clown" might be the most perceptive thing he's ever said. Attempts to classify him on the conventional political spectrum are destined to fail, and attempts to demonize him as some sort of standard Republican bogeyman will inevitably be so over-simplified as to be false. Such efforts assume far more coherence than he possesses.

Greenwald perceptively points out that the boisterous Tea Party movement and its allies are an equally contradictory mishmash, one that cannot accurately be understood as residing within the conventional GOP-Limbaugh-right-wing-establishment camp. I really do encourage you to read the entire Greenwald post. He points out that even though the GOP is trying to figure out how to use the anti-establishment sentiment to its own benefit, the movement is not comfortably left or right. Here's Greenwald:

Is opposition to the Wall Street bailout (supported by both parties' establishments) left or right? How about the view that Washington is inherently corrupt and beholden to the richest corporate interests and banks which, through lobbyist influence and vast financial contributions, own and control our political system? Is hostility towards Beltway elites liberal or conservative? Is opposition to the Surveillance State and endless expansions of federal police powers a view of liberals (who vehemently opposed such measures during the Bush era but now sometimes support or at least tolerate them) or conservatives (some of whom -- the Ron Paul faction -- objected just as vigorously, and naturally oppose such things regardless of who is in power as transgressions of the proper limits of government)? Liberals during the Bush era continuously complained about the doubling of the national debt, a central concern of many of these "tea party" protesters. Is the belief that Washington politicians are destroying the economic security of the middle class, while the rich grow richer, a liberal or conservative view? Opposition to endless wars and bankruptcy-inducing imperial policy generally finds as much expression among certain quarters on the Right as it does on the Left.

Some central political debates do break down along standard left-right lines (health care and tax policy). But there are many political issues that defy the conventional Left-Right political drama in which cable news traffics and which serves as the prism -- often the distorting and distracting prism -- for virtually all of our political discourse. Much of the citizen rage manifesting itself in the form of these protests doesn't actually fit comfortably on the left-right spectrum.

My deep irritation with and suspicion of Glenn Beck comes not because I dislike his anti-establishment orientation, but because he is a volatile clown who says crazy, destructive, stupid things. Caleb Stegall was right: what the anti-establishment movement needs are real leaders, leaders who are intelligent, sensible, coherent, civil ... and not affiliated with the Republican Party establishment. There is every reason to distrust the establishment's competence and good intentions. But if the only response to this comes from blubbering TV clowns who see conspiracies in public art, or cynical Republican operatives trying to remake themselves as populists, or people who are mad at everything and who are throwing all their inchoate rage at the wall to see what sticks -- well, nothing will change, at least not in a way that does anybody any good.

I think we have to recognize that a third party is never going to get anywhere in this country. It's just too against the grain of our system and our political psychology. There will have to be anti-establishment reformers arise out of both the Republican and Democratic camps, within the parties themselves. Where are the mad-as-hell reformers planning to take on their party's Congressional incumbents in 2010? Now would be a good time to get organized.