Jonathan Zimmerman: Glenn Beck Won--Progressivism Lost
[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”]
Not just for Mr. Beck’s Republican Party, which captured the House and nearly the Senate in yesterday’s midterm elections. The verdict represents a victory for Beck’s political philosophy, a brand of conservatism that sees progressive values as the No. 1 threat to America. One day, historians might look back on 2010 as the year that Americans sounded the death knell for progressivism itself.
The term dates to the early 20th century, when social reformers triggered an unprecedented explosion of government activity. To these self-described “Progressives,” America’s filthy cities, factories, farms, and schools cried out for improvement and regulation. They crafted new laws to bring this undirected chaos under intelligent control....
And that’s precisely what Beck despises about the Progressives. From his daily “lectures” at his television blackboard to the “courses” he offers at Beck “University,” he has mounted a steady campaign to discredit them.
It’s easy to mock the distortions and bizarre conspiracy theories in Beck’s tirades against progressivism, which he has even suggested results in Communism or Nazism....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
Not just for Mr. Beck’s Republican Party, which captured the House and nearly the Senate in yesterday’s midterm elections. The verdict represents a victory for Beck’s political philosophy, a brand of conservatism that sees progressive values as the No. 1 threat to America. One day, historians might look back on 2010 as the year that Americans sounded the death knell for progressivism itself.
The term dates to the early 20th century, when social reformers triggered an unprecedented explosion of government activity. To these self-described “Progressives,” America’s filthy cities, factories, farms, and schools cried out for improvement and regulation. They crafted new laws to bring this undirected chaos under intelligent control....
And that’s precisely what Beck despises about the Progressives. From his daily “lectures” at his television blackboard to the “courses” he offers at Beck “University,” he has mounted a steady campaign to discredit them.
It’s easy to mock the distortions and bizarre conspiracy theories in Beck’s tirades against progressivism, which he has even suggested results in Communism or Nazism....