- Glen Beck Inspires Sedition, Fears Senior Editor of Book World

Book World Senior Editor Stephen Levingston has taken the pains to review Glen Beck's new fiction, The Overton Window, for the Washington Post, and as a result has worried himself silly over the potential fall out among us common folk:

"The success of Glenn Beck's novel, "The Overton Window," will be measured not by its literary value (none), or its contribution to the thriller genre (small), or the money it rakes in (considerable), but rather by the rebelliousness it incites among anti-government extremists. If the book is found tucked into the ammo boxes of self-proclaimed patriots and recited at "tea party" assemblies, then Beck will have achieved his goal."

Mr. Beck is simply translating the ideas found in our founding documents to the times of today, an interesting exercise in my view. Strangely, Mr. Levingston illustrates Mr. Beck's point in his own paranoid response.

"Their insistence on nonviolence appears as disingenuous as anything out of the mouth of their nemesis, the insidious manipulator of reality Arthur Gardner. "There's nothing I wouldn't give up to defend my country," Molly says. "No matter how hard it might be, there's nothing that's in my power that I wouldn't do."

Of course, the country she speaks of is not a plot of land or a grove of trees, but rather is an idea about human liberty that was brought forth in this nation's founding documents. She is unwilling to give up liberty, and for that I applaud her. Mr. Levingston however thickly plods on:

"The danger of books like this is that radical readers may take the story's fiction for fact, or interpret the fiction -- which Beck encourages -- as a reflection of a reality that they must fend off by any means necessary. "The Overton Window" risks falling into the tradition of other anti-government novels such as "The Turner Diaries" by William L. Pierce"

George Orwell's 1984 comes more readily to mind. Anti-government? Not really. Pro-liberty would be how I would characterize it. I suppose by the same line of thinking Thomas Paine's Common Sense would be considered dangerous. All three books ask the reader to consider the moral superiority of individual liberty, and the insidious usurpation of liberty by the powers of the state. 1984 is a cautionary tale. Common Sense argues for government by the people and for the people, and challenges the inate sovereignty of the British crown. Are such ideas dangerous? Perhaps the books should be burned? That brings to mind another good book, Fahrenheit 451, where the state protected itself from dangerous ideas by burning the books that contained them.

Mr. Levingston, the idea of individual liberty is not dangerous to the people, but it is dangerous to the idea of an all powerful state. In our nation, founded on the moral superiority of individual liberty, and its necessary condition of limited government, freedom reigns, and will do so as long as free men and women are willing to assert their right to self government.

Your review reminds me of another Orwell book, Animal Farm, where power hungry pigs ran the place amuck. You might see yourself in there Mr. Levingston, perhaps in the role of...

....Squealer.

(Hat tip to Pundit and Pundette)