Beck out of GOP: Why leaving is not enough

By Alan Keyes

I was deep in the throes of thinking through the remainder of my column on building an alternative to the elitist faction's sham two-party system when an email drew my attention to a WND story with the headline "'Glenn Beck: I'm done with 'not good' GOP.'" The sub-head read "Declares he is no longer a Republican."

As the saying goes, truth in advertising requires that I declare my biases upfront. I don't trust Glenn Beck. He's one of those people who strikes conservative poses on issues here and there, but expresses utmost contempt for the issues of constitutional principle on which the perpetuation of America's liberty depends. I explained this at some length in a column I wrote back in January 2010 in response to his statement that concern over Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility for the presidency was the "dumbest thing I've ever heard."

In that column, I emphasized that I and others willing to battle in the courts of law and public opinion over the eligibility issue did so because bipartisan contempt for the Constitution's provisions in one area would inevitably lead to overall contempt for its authority. I wrote:

Some, including both Democrats and Republican, have responded to public concern by arguing that the majority will expressed in the 2008 election makes the constitutional issue irrelevant. But if it's correct to argue that when the outcome of an election warrants it, the winners have a mandate simply to ignore questions of constitutionality, then the struggle for political power trumps respect for the provisions of the Constitution. The result: Once power has been obtained by electoral means, it is no longer subject to constitutional limits.... What does it matter who reads the Constitution if, once in power, officials may arbitrarily pick and choose the provisions they are obliged to respect and carry out?

Bipartisan contempt for the Constitution's language regarding presidential eligibility foreshadowed the GOP quislings de facto acceptance of Obama's disregard for the constitutional requirement that the president "take care the laws be faithfully executed" when it comes to illegal immigration. It foreshadowed congressional disregard, in the budget process, for the constitutional requirement that revenue-raising measures be initiated in the U.S. House of Representatives. It foreshadowed Obama's pretense that lawful executive orders can be issued without warrant in laws duly passed by the U.S. Congress.

Beck cites the GOP's failure to respond to these abuses among his reasons for now turning against the party. But by ridiculing the demand that the Constitution's eligibility provisions be taken seriously, he himself contributed to an atmosphere of bipartisan contempt for the Constitution's authority.

Later in 2010, Glenn Beck suddenly began to make a big show of his belief in the importance of religious faith. This culminated in a much publicized event in Washington in August 2010.

Again I found it hard to trust his posturing. In a blog post I published just before that event, I gave the reasons for my mistrust. Among other things, I wrote:

Beck says that he believes in the Constitution, and in the principles of the Founding Fathers. Yet regarding the eligibility issue, he acts as if plainly stated requirements of the Constitution can be contemptuously brushed aside without damage to its authority.

He says that he believes that we must return to God. Yet he abandons principle on issues that most explicitly involve imposing on our nation laws and practices that deny the natural law derived from God's authority.... ["Glenn Beck is pro gay marriage"]

What am I to make of someone who feelingly declares that we must return America to God and its principled foundations, then acts and speaks in ways that effectively deny both?

In a blog post I published in September 2009, I pointed out that "Obama's socialist putsch is rousing the conservative instincts of the American people." I wrote of the quisling GOP leaders who "see it as their job to exploit this reaction for political purposes, but without letting power fall into the hands of any true conservatives. It's a delicate maneuver, in which media Judas goats have an indispensable role."

By now it has become obvious to most thinking conservatives that this is an accurate assessment of the quisling GOP's role in the elitist faction's strategy for the demise of the constitutional liberty of the American people. Yet constitutional liberty still stands a chance if the GOP quislings' continual betrayals lead liberty's authentic partisans to abandon the GOP delusion.

So I sincerely wish I could believe in Glenn Beck's show of leaving the GOP. I wish I could stifle the thought that it's just a performance, a prelude to leading anyone who trusts him back into the political slaughter pens of the sham two-party ploy, whenever the elitist faction's media puppeteers decide the time is right.

But I am not convinced by postures justified only by opposition to this or that unpopular feature of the elitist faction's assault on our sovereignty as a free people. Such posturing may be nothing more than the fatally misleading footsteps of a Judas goat.

I am looking for people positively committed to the principle of God-endowed right stated in the American Declaration of Independence.

I am looking for people who understand that securing our future as a free people requires more than abandoning the elitists' single faction partisan sham.

It requires building a process to replace it, a process that sees politics, as the Constitution does, in terms of the grassroots communities in which we live.

It requires building a process that is based, like our sovereignty as a people, on a commitment to do right as God gives us to see the right. That is, after all, the true mainstay of liberty.

Our Constitution of liberty demands a politics to match. In articles published this week, I began the process of thinking through how partisans of liberty can bring that politics to life in the months ahead. Are you willing to consider it?

© Alan Keyes