I'm not a fan of Bill O'Reilly fan, who fancies himself a conservative and putative "Protector" of the Constitution. Glenn Beck has inadvertently proved he is neither simply by being a foil to O'Reilly's own attempts to position himself between Fox left-wing and right-wing  bomb throwers.
       I rarely watch even snippets of O'Reilly, but being on the road and caught in a two hour vortex between a dinner and meeting, I watched the last half of his show on Friday, when he interviewed Geraldo Rivera and Glenn Beck in succession.
       Rivera, if you don't already know, is Fox News' bad boy, the one guy most agree doesn't belong there except to entirely wash the "fair" out of Fox's "balanced". The problem is, like O'Reilly, Rivera is trained in law, and therefore can be right about legal issues even when he doesn't know why.
       Friday's issue was the indictment of Blago, son of Drago, former governor of Illinois, in a case we stated a long time ago as having several holes in it. Rivera agrees with us. In Chicago, you can not only indict, but convict, a ham sandwich. But this is a tough tough case to convict, and even more difficult to win on appeal. We like Blago's chances.
       But O'Reilly doesn't like Blago, so end of story. He's guilty. This is not the first time O'Reilly has packed his legal training and sense of objective fairness away in his wallet and hung the guilty bas***d before the trial even started.

       Then came Glenn Beck, who's Fox News' new kid on the block, having taken over John Gibson's old 5 o'clock slot and in very short order turned it into a big hit even up against some of the biggest prime time news shows.
       Beck's schtick, as you already know if you listen to his morning talk radio show, is an apocalyptic vision of the end of the era of the liberty of Man, which began here, in America, sometime around 1776.
       You already know our view of Beck, especially his style of delivery and his end game vision. We're not fans. But we usually can't fault his analysis, and in this case, it's that America is leaning fascist. That was to have been the theme of his Friday show which was canceled due to the Binghamton shootings. (It was rescheduled for this next Friday.)
       As a promo for next week's airing, but also as a way of positioning himself, O'Reilly prevued the fascist theme with Beck, while also pooh-poohing it. What I found most interesting is how he tried to shoot Beck's arguments down...as well as exposing possible reasons why.

      For background, remember the Founders knew that most people engage in politics with their own self-interests center-stage. This is why they came up with the balance and check system, which would keep the more overt self-interests in check (until Roe and gay marriage came along). This is also why they made the process so messy, so as to insure the self-interests of parties are exposed early and often...so as to protect the interests of the least men and women, whose interest are most often neglected in the legislative process.
      This is also the reason the Founders assumed there would always be a small army of "protectors" (about whom we've written plenty} who would transcend self-interests and defend the interests of the constitutional purposes, the common weal and the liberty of Man...and other stuff like that.
      Why I bring this up is that O'Reilly pooh-poohed Beck's belief in a coming fasco-socialism is because it had not yet cost him a single freedom. In fact, he mentioned that when the Clinton administration targeted him for tax audits, he sent his lawyer over to threaten them with a lawsuit if they continued...forgetting this is a thing you or I can't do...or that the cost of his legal fees alone is a kind of theft of a person's property and money by government (part of the government-as-bully policies arising from the bureaucratic estate of the 70's), and also something ordinary people can't afford. To the rest of us, when the government comes a'calling...with a writ, a lawyer, a regulator or a squad car...we concede and pay up.
      Still, in the five or so  minutes with Beck, Bill O'Reilly couched his entire fear or dislike of socialism based on what it might do to him.
      Glenn actually countered well, up-dating the tired old "one world government" theme to the more current "trans-national" movement, which over the years has been finding favor in the "sovereign individual" crowd among many wealthy people. It is real, not a conspiracy.
      Chesterton once wrote that the rich don't really need "democracy", and these trends prove it...rich people seeking government structures that will provide them succor. But what you get when the rich marry government is indeed, a kind of fascism. Glenn Beck is right, although he would be wrong to try to put an exact face on it just yet.
      Still, this fight should be fought, and Beck is fighting it, and Bill O'Reilly, if not in the camp of the self-interested, is still on the sidelines.
      As we see it now, Bill O'Reilly is trying to position himself between Rivera on the wacky Left by defining Glenn Beck as being on the wacky Right, out of his "other" self interest, vanity. I think he feels a little threatened by Beck's sudden success at Fox, so needs to keep him in a positioned in a lesser role.
      O'Reilly has shown his true hand here. He is a not a Protector.
      So watch your topknot, Mr Beck.
Vassar Bushmills