The Benefits of a Glenn Beck Education

So last week, I wrote a little piece for the Register on why it is inadvisable to get your education in history and civics from Glenn Beck, given that he has demonstrated, at one and the same time, the eagerness to be regarded as the Educator of the Masses, as well as a spectacular ignorance of historical matters such as his loopy analysis of the Council of Nicaea. A number of readers took my point right away, but inevitably a number of others, bound and determined to cling to the notion that Beck is a reliable guide to matters historical, challenged my point. Some seemed to be impervious to all reason (favorite accusation against me: “Closet Modernist Feels Threatened”), maintaining in the teeth of easily documentable evidenece to the contrary, that Beck was our sherpa guide up the Mountain of Truth whenever he spoke to matters having to do with current American history. One reader wrote back in a fever of outrage, denouncing me for failing to appreciate the awesome job Beck is doing exposing our Muslim-in-Chief’s fiendish plot to establish the Jihad on American soil (among his many other monstrous plots): “How about this quote from his book Audacity of Hope…“I will stand with the Muslims if the political winds shift in an ugly direction”. There is more, much more, but you just keep focusing on Glen Beck’s misguided take on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Shortly thereafter, somebody pointed out that this is not what Obama, in fact, wrote. They even provided a link where you could get the correct quote
Response from the Beck enthusiast:

Google or Ask Jeeves search the Quote:
“I will stand with the Muslims if the political winds shift in anugly direction” It will take you to Barak Obama’s biography.

So I go find and post the actual quote which reads as follows:

Actual quote from “The Audacity of Hope” [pg. 261]: “Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

Nothing daunted, The Beck enthusiast rejoins by saying:

Yes, Obama made the statement:
I will stand with the Muslims if the political winds shift in an ugly direction…Audacity of Hope. Google the quote, there are numerous references.

http://www.americanconservativedaily.com/2008/03/muslim-obama-‘will-stand-with-muslims-should-political-winds-shift-in-ugly-direction’/

I reply, in part:

No. He didn’t. I provided you with the actual quote, which referred to
Arabs and Pakistanis, not Muslims.

Ever watch Monk? Tony Shaloub is an Arab. He’s also a Maronite Catholic. Arab =/= Muslim.

By the way, the extreme irony of your position is that when you Google the misquote that you provided it refers you, not to the book, but to a bunch of right wing sites who are repeating the same pseudoknowledge without fact-checking it. And number two on the list is… Glenn Beck.

This is why I’m urging people who are serious about exercising their faith in the public square to get their information from reliable sources and not from quacks who pretend to be experts in history and then reveal themselves to be spectacularly ignorant. There are plenty of sound reasons to oppose many of Obama’s policies. But you can’t do that if you go around regurgitating fraudulent quotes that you believed because somebody with a well modulated voice told you so and you read it on a website somewhere. All somebody has to do is produce an actual copy of the book you haven’t bothered to read and you either wind up feeling silly or, worse, persist in circulating the quote because you think that it’s okay to bear false witness against your neighbor in a good cause.

All this brings me to today’s story:

Protesters gathered at Ground Zero Sunday to object to plans for a mosque a few blocks north of where the World Trade Center towers stood. From North Jersey Record columnist Mike Kelly:

At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

“Go home,” several shouted from the crowd.

“Get out,” others shouted.

In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called “The Way.” Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

“I’m a Christian,” Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.

But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.

“I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here,” a frustrated Nassralla said afterward.

Obama’s quote (the actual one, I mean, not the fake one) is, in fact, not a problem at all. It is directed toward exactly this kind of mob racism. Unless you think the Executive should *not* resist a mob call to intern an entire population of people based on their religion or race, there is no reason at all to complain about it. But when you regurgitate junk that Glenn Beck asserts as fact without fact-checking it and declare people who question it to be “modernists” for defending Nicaea, you are rather more likely to be part of the mob than standing against it when they menace Christians for the crime of sharing your views in a dark skin.