Glenn Beck's Common Sense

The subject book is currently on the bestseller lists and driving the left crazy, which means it can't be all bad. There is nothing "wrong" with the book, I just don't particularly like his style, but the message is more or less fine -- in my opinion he may be too hard on politicians! I know that is hard to believe for readers of this blog, but Joe Scarborough's Mom has a good point -- "you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar", and I fear that in our mourning over the direction that America has fallen, too many Republicans have switched to vinegar. Let the left be angry, we have too much to be thankful for to be angry! They can kill home, country, friends, family, and fortune, but they can't take faith, so our lot is still better than theirs even in death.

The book covers pretty much the factual litany -- out of control spending, the loss of individual freedoms, the Ponzi scheme we can't pay for of FICA and Medicare, the way the tax code is used to reward cronies and punish political "enemies", investing in dubious pollution ideas over people, the horror of gerrymandering ... etc.

It's all true, it is all sad -- I just don't really see a plan for action in it and worry that Beck is going to create more eneimies than he does converts to the cause. But, I may well be wrong on that, so if you don't think you have a full bead on just how bad things are, it isn't very long and it covers a broad spectrum of the current disaster.