Glenn Beck's "Faith Hope Charity" theme is missing crucial element.
For 2010, Glenn Beck's theme for his Fox News channel program is "Faith Hope and Charity" as the foundational principles America's Founding Fathers used to create America. But one cannot explain America's exceptionalism on these three principles alone. by Nickalis N. Tower
(libertarian)
Sunday, May 23, 2010
I've been an admirer of Glenn Beck ever since he gave air time to Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" on CNN. That book opened my eyes to the political socialist "progressives" that have infiltrated the Democratic party since the days of Woodrow Wilson. Now since Glenn has moved to Fox News channel, he has been desperately trying to show how Progressives in both parties have been erecting socialist political structures in the federal government, and how We the People can take our country back in the name of America's Founding principles of freedom, justice, individual rights, achievement, prosperity and progress. Glenn's "Faith Hope Charity" theme is embodied in three of America's Founding Fathers: Samuel Adams' faith, hope instilled by the virtuous George Washington, and Ben Franklin's charity. He asserts that if each of us individually apply faith, hope, and charity in our lives, that America's Founding glory can be restored. But there is one crucial element missing from Beck's formulation. At first I thought Reason was the missing element, and while the Founding Fathers were mostly men of virtuous reason, there is something higher than reason. Reason in good cases identifies and integrates the facts of reality; in bad cases reason is used to evade and disintegrate the facts of reality. Honesty is the missing element embodified by America's Founding Fathers. Through honesty, reason is sustained properly to identify and integrate the facts of reality. Through dishonesty, reason is not sustained, but short circuited via whims and feelings that are used to evade and disintegrate the facts of reality. So to complete Glenn Beck's theme, John Adams would be the Founding Father I would associate with Honesty. The HBO miniseries on John Adams provides ample examples of his honesty.
Honesty is a childhood virtue that is crucial to keep in order to become a productive happy adult. Without it, Faith, Hope, and Charity won't get you far in life. Will those three qualities then allow us to restore America to her founding glory? Without honesty, how does one explain or defend the economic founding principle of Capitalism using Faith Hope and Charity?
From the Objectivist Newsletter:
Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the evidence of reality provided by man's senses. To base one's convictions on reason, is to base them on the facts of reality. Faith is the acceptance of an idea without evidence or proof, or in spite of evidence to the contrary.
To rest one's advocacy of capitalism on faith, is to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies. Such a position implies that a free society cannot be rationally justified - that there are no rational arguments why men should not murder and enslave one another - that logic is on the side of dictatorships, firing squads and concentration camps, but men should renounce logic in favor of such "irrationalities" as freedom, justice, individual rights, achievement, prosperity and progress.
The implications of tying capitalism to faith have come nakedly into the open in the explicit irrationalism of many "conservative" groups. Intending to bring the mystical concept of Original Sin into political theory, they declare that man is depraved by nature, that reason is impotent, that man should not attempt to create a perfect political system or to establish a rational society on earth - but should settle for capitalism, instead.
The communists allege that their political philosophy is rational and has been scientifically proved. The mystical "conservatives" concede it and retreat into the world of the supernatural, surrendering this world to communism - a victory that the communists' irrational ideology could never win on its own merits.
Collectivism gained its intellectual influence and appeal by promising a scientific approach to social problems - a promise which it could not and did not keep. Today, disillusioned by the horrors which collectivism has achieved in practice, people, particularly young people, are seeking a rational alternative - which, in fact, only capitalism can provide. But instead of proof, logic or science, today's mystical "conservatives" have nothing better to offer than appeals to faith, revelation and the supernatural. In our age, in the presence of the triumphs of science, no thinking man will listen to the voices from the Dark Ages speaking of Original Sin and the futility of human endeavor; no thinking man will reject reason and the achievements of man's mind. If the "conservatives" succeeded in convincing him that he must accept capitalism on faith or not at all, he would, properly, answer: Not at all.
To claim that capitalism rests on religious faith is to contradict the fundamental principles of the United States; in America, religion is a private matter which must not be brought into political issues.
One need not be an atheist in order to fight for capitalism - provided one keeps the two issues separate. A rational advocate of capitalism can co-operate with religious people who share his political principles, but only in a strictly secular movement, that is: only in a movement that does not claim religion as the base and justification of its political principles.
The greatest single threat to capitalism today is the attempt to put capitalism, mysticism and Original Sin over on the public as one "package deal." No attacks by collectivists could do more to discredit capitalism than is done by this kind of attempt. Its result can be only to consign capitalism to the "lunatic fringe" of political thought and to remove it from the realm of serious, civilized discussion.
A rational advocate of capitalism should repudiate any individual or group that links capitalism to the supernatural. He commits treason to his own cause if and when he co-operates with the mystical "conservatives," if and when he sanctions them as creditable spokesmen for the cause of freedom.
The views expressed
in this article are those of Nickalis N. Tower only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
Nickalis N. Tower is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated
with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Posted By: Taliesin
Date: June 2, 2010 02:19:00 PM
Beck actually linked Hope to Honesty. By stating that it was America's hope in George Washington as an honest man that solidified the different factions after the Constitution was adopted.
As far as faith versus reason, Cartesian thought which is arguably a foundation of western thought shows that all reason is based on faith. Reason relies on assumption, no matter how small, from which all structures of reason are built. For example, we measure Celsius Temperature from the point where water freezes.
The assumption is that water is a good basis, Kelvin or Fahrenheit use shows a disagreement. We use metric measurement, or English measurement based on comfort. Either can be accurate.
Most reasoning is based on probable outcomes. Honestly, there is always a chance that we can be wrong. By reason alone, we cannot know that the universe is not about to implode. Nothing we measure with has a chance of seeing what has occurred in the universe within the past few years. We simply have faith that the stars we see still exist. We have no way of knowing.
So what we have faith in is arguably important. We cannot have faith in reason since reason can prove many things. Reason is used to prove communism and capitalism. The difference is in the foundational assumptions, the faith on which the philosophy is structured. Communism has faith that wealth must be shared, that life should be fair. Capitalism assumes that people will only work if they can only claim ownership of what they work for, that life is unfair.
And remember the concept of inalienable rights is a matter of faith. Search all you want and you can find no particle of justice, no molecule of hope, nor even an element that endows it's possessor with liberty. These things are emotional only, they are faith.
