Open letter to Glenn Beck

Mr. Beck,
You’re losing me! I was a staunch supporter and advocate of your seemingly unbiased and honest arguments, and often I still agree with you. But when your obsession with “a pox upon both your houses” went beyond “fair and balanced” to demagoguery unsupported by facts, I began switching around to other channels during your show. Now, you’ve taken a further step and pretty much lost me entirely.

When you summarily dismissed the motives of the IRS suicide pilot, I chose to take you off my DVR list. In no way should violence be condoned, but having been trained as an interrogator, I can assure you, to dismiss a person’s motives because of their actions only increases the furtherance of those actions.

Al Qaeda has valid complaints regarding our Godless culture and (in their eyes) Satanic embracing of pornography, promiscuity, abortion, secularism and divorce.
The IRS suicide bomber apparently has valid complaints regarding an overbearing government, (in his eyes) heartless corporations, and the complex and confiscatory tax system.
Timothy McVey had valid complaints regarding the fascistic invasion of the Branch Dividian compound at Waco – which, if we were honest about it, was really not much different than the attack on Concord by the British Regulars in 1775.
THIS DOES NOT EXCUSE THEIR ACTIONS, but neither can we just bury ourselves in denial, pretending their respective actions were the result of mental disorders.

In each of these actions, these very normal (and mentally sound) men felt pushed to a point of helplessness; a point of no alternative. You were blessed and fortunate that night you lay on the kitchen floor in the fetal position inasmuch as you saw a way out. These men saw no alternatives, no other choice, and no other course of action. Their honest beliefs and opinions shouldn’t be either dismissed or unquestionably accepted, but at least addressed. Remember, even in our own revolution, it wasn’t the Tea Act, the Townsend Acts, or even the Stamp Act that was intolerable, but the continued apathy and disinterest of Parliament and the King.

As far as your ‘pox on both houses’ attitude; comparing GW Bush to Obama is akin to comparing a Pinto to a Lamborghini, your continued equating of the two reflects more on your biases than on presidential policies. I mean really? A man who wanted to privatize Social Security was some closet Progressive? Really? Come on Glenn, get some perspective!