Michael Medved explains a few political facts of life to one of Glenn Beck's devotees.
Medved is absolutely right. Mouthing Beck's slogans is no substitute for argument and there really are important substantive differences between the Republicans and the Democrats. But, for all his inarticulateness, the caller has a point. Ronald Reagan raised the tantalizing possibility of making the federal government smaller, less expensive, and less intrusive into our lives, but neither he nor any of his successors has done anything substantive to reverse the trend toward ever bigger government and in some cases (the Bushes come immediately to mind) have actually hastened it. There is no reason to believe that McCain would have been any better, especially given his embrace of the environmentalist agenda. Medved is right to say that elections matter and that we should choose the least damaging alternative; but the caller is also right when he asserts that a choice between greater and lesser evils is unacceptable. That's what the tea parties are all about and Glenn Beck has been providing listeners with a plausible [and largely correct] historical narrative that can help conservatives to contextualized their grievances and understand how we got into such a predicament.
