GLENN BECK IS NOT LOSING HIS MIND

Glenn Beck is losing ratings.

But he’s not losing his mind: everything he does is calculated to keep you right on the edge of your seat, blood pressure elevated, waiting for the next “episode” (as he revealingly calls his daily airings) when “all will be revealed.”

His MO is to pose as an autodidact, which is at least honest, because that is what he is: “I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I didn’t know any of this stuff myself about [insert target du jour--SEIU, the Caliphate, George Soros, how racist the progressives were] until I read [insert name of fringe-y book by deservedly unknown author] and boy did it ever open my eyes! You there in the recliner with the TV dinner, you need to educate yourself, find out more about the connections [scribbling frantically on chalkboard] and draw your own conclusions!”

But why bother, when he’s already done it for you?

CRUSTACEAN NATION

What follows is to be understood as a dialogue between a protostome and a deuterostome.

P. Yes, yes, I've heard of Walter Reuther and Joe Hill and Jimmy Hoffa. My dad was in a union, and I never heard him complain. You know, I guess it's OK in the private sector, but public-sector unions are an entirely different matter because they negotiate with government monopolies which can pass $100,000 teachers' salaries and $200,000 a year pensions for firemen on to us poor taxpayers! And then they reward the school boards and fire commissioners by bringing out the troops in November. Teachers (except the lazy and liberal ones) and firefighters we love, but to let them have collective bargaining? That's just a step away from communism, where the government owns and runs everything, and "the workers" run the government. In reality, of course, "the workers" are a little gang of bosses, some driven by idealism or utopianism, and some by sheer greed or power-lust.

Susan Sarandon, meet Joseph Stalin.

D. You are ignoring the fact that private-sector unions have been all but wiped out over the last 30 years. Unions need a base from which to claw their way back into serious private-sector organizing. What would you suggest if not the "government unions," with all their faults? But it seems most of you folks who purport to be down with unions don't really want that, you want the public-sector unions not just weakened but gutted and filleted. And speaking of seafood, you may have heard the claim (true or not I can't say) that if one lobster tries to climb out of a pot of boiling water, others in the pot will claw him back down in, so there’s no chance that he might help pull them out. Of course, lobsters are anything but altruistic, and I’d like to think anti-union Americans are smarter than crustaceans, but I’m beginning to have my doubts.

Larry T., meet drawn butter.

WHAT UNIONS HAVE MEANT

For 75 years, from shortly after the end of the Civil War until shortly after the end of World War II, the sharp odor of class conflict hung in the American air. Unions arose repeatedly­, only to be beaten down. At length, by the mid-20th century, a modus vivendi prevailed: organized labor purged itself of its anti-capit­alist elements, and capital accepted unions and collective bargaining­. Not coincident­ally, it was at the same time that the US became the middle-cla­ss country it still fancies itself to be, in which the rich were only moderately rich and the poor had the benefit of the higher wages and benefits the unions had fought for--and better chances to become middle-class or even rich than ever before or since.

In the 1980s, the labor-mana­gement truce broke down. First Reagan-era union-bust­ing, then seemingly inexorable globalizat­ion with its punishing outsourcin­g of jobs to low-wage countries, broke the back of organized labor in the private sector. That left the public sector (teachers, firemen, etc.) as its last bastion--o­ne which is now also under assault, in Wisconsin and soon coming to a state near you.

I would be the last to defend everything unions have done! They often protect incompeten­ce and resist worthwhile innovation­s. They have been prone to racketeeri­ng. They have not been above using violence, but the next time you hear someone carelessly speak of "union thugs" as if it were all one word, I would invite you to do a bit of digging into the history of strikebrea­king and "industria­l services" deployed on the side of corporate capital. Try Googling "Baldwin Felts" or "Battle of the Overpass." Then you will learn what your grandparents and great-grandparents were up against, how they prevailed over it, and how their gains have been squandered by worker complacency and employer hostility.

MY FINAL SOLUTION TO THE JEWISH QUESTION

Allow me to pose a whatif:

Should Israel find itself about to be overwhelmed by a powerful coalition of forces coming from north, south, east and west, what if the US were to grant, on the spot, US citizenship to every citizen of Israel? Don’t laugh: similar suggestions were made about joint Anglo-American citizenship in 1940, when the British had their backs to the wall.

This would not necessarily mean military support for Israel, certainly not if our forces were still stretched and overextended as they seem to be at present. But the US could surely muster up enough naval power for a colossal Dunkirk, evacuating its new Jewish citizens from the Middle East and giving them refuge in America. I can’t think of any set of 5 million people on earth likelier to make positive contributions to American business, society and culture.

Why just pray for the Jews when we could actually do something to help them? But then, What Would Jesus Say if we thwarted His Plan for a massacre of those Jews who remained "stiffnecked" by refusing to accept Him?