Crazy loves crazy. Guess where, after announcing his wondrous plan to destroy Medicare as we know it, Paul Ryan headed for one of his first stops of the day. Yep, you guessed it -- Glenn Beck and his radio show. In the opening of their discussion about Ryan's insanely destructive plan, Beck fawns all over him because he does love to destroy working-class families and the poor. Paul responds in kind.
Dontcha just feel the manlove?
BECK: Paul Ryan, you sir, you sir, I love you.
RYAN: I love you too.
...
BECK: You know, you're from Wisconsin. you know who's involved with these unions. They are communist, socialist, and revolutionary ... What can you do to shut these revolutionaries down?
RYAN: Well, ultimately we have to win elections.
Beck and Ryan agree not only that they love each other, but that progressives and union members are the true cancer of society. Did you know we're revolutionaries now too?
David Brooks wrote a feeble column that ran today in the NYT attempting to make Ryan's proposals sound serious. Republicans are emboldened to put out as much crazy legislation as they can because the result is that American people will become numb to the amount of insanity that is being transmitted by the Tea Party politicians and the media at large.
I'm sure all of C&L's readers know that the Beltway media will proclaim Ryan as "courageous" and "bold" for releasing his nonsense, and Beck was his an important stop on his Destroy America Tour. Look, even some progressives are losing their minds at what Ryan has released today; Does the Ryan budget make Simpson-Bowles look better? No. Thanks mcjoan.
GLENN BECK: Nice to meet you, sir. Tell me, tell me your thoughts on progressivism.PAUL RYAN: Right. What I have been trying to do, and if you read the entire Oklahoma speech or read my speech to Hillsdale College that they put in there on Primus Magazine, you can get them on my Facebook page, what I've been trying to do is indict the entire vision of progressivism because I see progressivism as the source, the intellectual source for the big government problems that are plaguing us today and so to me it's really important to flush progressives out into the field of open debate.
GLENN: I love you.
PAUL RYAN: So people can actually see what this ideology means and where it's going to lead us and how it attacks the American idea.
GLENN: Okay. Hang on just a second. I ‑‑ did you see my speech at CPAC?
PAUL RYAN: I've read it. I didn't see it. I've read it, a transcript of it.
GLENN: And I think we're saying the same thing. I call it ‑‑
PAUL RYAN: We are saying the same thing.
GLENN: It's a cancer.
PAUL RYAN: Exactly. Look, I come from ‑‑ I'm calling you from Janesville, Wisconsin where I'm born and raised.
GLENN: Holy cow.
PAUL RYAN: Where we raise our family, 35 miles from Madison. I grew up hearing about this stuff. This stuff came from these German intellectuals to Madison‑University of Wisconsin and sort of out there from the beginning of the last century. So this is something we are familiar with where I come from. It never sat right with me. And as I grew up, I learned more about the founders and reading the Austrians and others that this is really a cancer because it basically takes the notion that our rights come from God and nature and turns it on its head and says, no, no, no, no, no, they come from government, and we here in government are here to give you your rights and therefore ration, redistribute and regulate your rights. It's a complete affront of the whole idea of this country and that is to me what we as conservatives, or classical liberals if you want to get technical.
GLENN: Thank you.
This is the serious, gutsy, courageous intellectual who has the fatuous gasbags drooling and genuflecting.
Ryan is an "intellectual" the same way Beck is an "intellectual." They both believe that progressivism is a cancer that's plaguing the country and that it's really important to flush it out. I think he may have succeeded in doing that today. I'm just not so sure he's going to succeed in killing it in the long run. It's just possible that most people don't see old age pensions and health care as being quite the disease on the body politic that Ryan does.
It's making me sick watching the gasbags on TV today and their positive reaction to Ryan's plan; I know it's going to carry into the night and the next day. But if you can understand anything about Paul Ryan, understand that he and Beck are sympaticos, a mutual-admiration society. That says it all.
