This is the second in the new series “In Depth,” longer reflections on the events of the day. In this post, Gary Alan Fine, examines the problematic relationship between truth and politics. He considers “rumors, doubtful truth claims, misleading information, and, yes, even lies,” using the case of President Barack Obama as a provocative case study. The post begins on this page, but you can go to the full post by clicking here. -Jeff

In January 2008, during the Presidential primary season, a man by the name of Larry Sinclair posted a video on YouTube that claimed that Illinois State Senator Barack Obama had supplied him with cocaine and that they had sexual relations in the back of a limousine. Mr. Sinclair subsequently took a lie detector test, which, seemed to suggest that he was telling the truth. This was a powerful claim, particularly since now four years later few Americans have ever heard of it. Mr. Sinclair appeared on the Jeff Rense radio talk show and his story was posted on the Drudge Report and other political websites interested in alternative knowledge and conspiracies.

Early on the Obama campaign realized that they would be beset by a torrent of rumors. Perhaps, this was because of the historic nature of his candidacy. Perhaps this was a function of the bitter political strategies of his opponents. Perhaps, it was a function of the Internet as an unregulated site for absurd claims, or perhaps, this was politics as currently played. To cope with these rumors, the Obama campaign established a website, “Fight the Smears,” with the goal of helping voters to “Learn the Truth about Barack Obama.” Or at least, the truth as the Obama campaign claimed it to be. The website claimed that the truth included that “the McCain campaign is maliciously distorting Barack’s strong record on crime,” and “Barack Obama is a committed Christian and not a Muslim.” Both political opinions and rumors are targeted on this website.

For the entire post and to continue reading  click here.

Early on the Obama campaign realized that they would be beset by a torrent of rumors. Perhaps, this was because of the historic nature of his candidacy. Perhaps this was a function of the bitter political strategies of his opponents. Perhaps, it was a function of the Internet as an unregulated site for absurd claims, or perhaps, this was politics as currently played. To cope with these rumors, the Obama campaign established a website, “Fight the Smears,” with the goal of helping voters to “Learn the Truth about Barack Obama.” Or at least, the truth as the Obama campaign claimed it to be. The website claimed that the truth included that “the McCain campaign is maliciously distorting Barack’s strong record on crime,” and “Barack Obama is a committed Christian and not a Muslim.” Both political opinions and rumors are targeted on this website.

However, the website, designed to treat contemptuous smears, did not deny that Barack Obama supplied Mr. Sinclair with illegal drugs or that Mr. Sinclair engaged in oral sex with the commander-in-chief. These assertions were not addressed. Some allegations are beneath contempt. To remove any suspense let me announce that I will not address whether Mr. Sinclair’s story is true. The point is that this story of Barack Obama being on the “down low” never reached such a critical mass that the campaign felt that a public refutation was warranted.

Rumors, doubtful truth claims, misleading information, and, yes, even lies are part of what a candidate, any candidate, must face. John McCain was accused of having an affair with a lobbyist and about lying about his captivity in North Vietnam. The stories about Bill and Hillary could fill a book – indeed they have filled several – from Hillary’s lesbianism to Bill having fathered a black child. George W. Bush certainly knows about the stickiness of rumors of cocaine. Politicians of all stripes are the target of uncertain knowledge. Data are lacking as to whether President Obama because of a background that seems exotic to many Americans – Kenyan, Indonesian, Hawaiian, mixed-race and Ivy League – is the target of more rumors or nastier rumors than other in his line of work.

I write as a professional agnostic as to the truth of these claims. This doesn’t mean that I think that there is no truth, but, rather that facts are not orphans. They have parents to guide and to dress them. They are debutantes, ready to be presented to society. Claims about political reputations are known through their sponsors, and are then judged, for better and for worse.

Many students of rumor quite reasonably wish to find truth. Perhaps best known is Cass Sunstein in his book On Rumors, and he is not alone. Winnowing wheat from chaff is an honorable endeavor. But rumor is defined as a truth claim that lacks secure standards of evidence, not false information. Whether true or false rumor’s source is unofficial.

Yet, what about ignorance? Just as facts have provenance, so does their absence. Not knowing and forgetting what had been known do not simply happen. Ignorance like knowledge may be sponsored. The field of unknowledge has come to be known as Agnotology. Why are some things known, and others unknown? Much of the work on the structure of ignorance has emerged from science studies. The work of historian Robert Proctor on what we know and do not know about the dangers of tobacco is exemplary. Ignorance is in the interest of some. Ultimately we choose what is knowable, and there are institutions that support the knowing and others that make knowing difficult.

Creating knowledge and ignorance is the source of conflict and contention. Certainty need not always be desired. Let us remember the tobacco company executive who wrote in a memo that “Doubt is our product,” implying that the scientific controversy over the malign health effects of cigarettes was and should remain an open debate. He is manufacturing controversy. Is the debate real or is it a sham? When is knowledge uncertain and when is it definitive? When is debate to be closed? When do debaters become deniers?

The most dramatic instance of a closed debate is that of Holocaust revisionism. Groups who doubt the standard, academic picture of the Holocaust claim that they simply wish an open discussion, a mutual search for truth. So says the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. Their foes, such as historian Deborah Lipstadt, contend that is no second side, just one truth. And so Lipstadt and others suggest that their foes in the game of historical truth are not revisionists (their preferred label), but rather deniers.

One sees a similar debate in the controversy over evolution and intelligent design. Proponents of intelligent design suggest that science educators “teach the controversy.” Their opponents suggest that proponents of intelligent design are engaged in “evolution denial.” A similar debate occurs when issues of climate change enter the public arena. And we find climate change deniers versus Earthers, climate change fanatics, labeled to echo the Birthers. Who has the right to control knowledge?

Political debate, in principle, is different than scientific claims, but making the distinction is embedded in social practice; it is not easy and involves power. Policy discussion is embedded in the public sphere, and there is a strong case to be made that savory talk and unproven claims are needed in an open society, as I argued in an earlier post. Civil society should not be open only to experts. It is often said that everyone is entitled to her own opinion, but not to her own facts. This is a slogan that sounds proper, but it leaves open the question of who selects the facts to which people are entitled. Knowledge and power are both involved.

Consider four claims about President Obama. None of them are proven which is why I select them. As to whether any or all of them are disproven depends on what we mean by disproven. The claims are first that Barack Obama is not a native-born American citizen, born in Kenya. The second is that Obama is a Muslim. Third, the claim with which I began this essay, that Barack Obama engaged in gay sex, and the fourth that Barack Obama is a socialist. I wonder: if the president were forced to select one of these rumors to be true, which one would he select?

Each of these claims and the many others made about many other politicians depend on the existence of reputational entrepreneurs, men and women who have interests and resources in making claims stick or denying them. The judgment of each one depends on different types of truth claims. If they are false, they are false in different ways or at least depend on different forms of truth. Some possible claims are so outlandish that we never hear them: Barack Obama shoots heroin in the White House, that he fathered a child with a white woman, or that he is a Chinese secret agent. Perhaps if my internet search were more intensive I would discover such assertions. Claims are easy to make, and there is always something that can be put forth as evidence.

Obama and the Birthers: the plasticity of incomplete knowledge

Unlike many nations in which genetics is destiny, in America, citizenship is based on the land itself: the place in which a child was born matters more than who his parents are. A child who was born in Honolulu to two vacationing Kenyans is a natural-born American citizen and could be elected president. A child born in Nairobi to two Mayflower descendents is not a natural-born citizen. Apparently, neither of these cases is at issue with President Obama.

The claim that Obama was born outside the United States territorial limits is so culturally salient that the proponents of the claim have been awarded their own name: Birthers, mirroring the Truthers who doubt the sanctioned 9/11 narrative. Why would this claim be made? If true, it suggests that Barack Obama cannot constitutionally be President. The election results must be overturned.

For many the claim sounds wild, if not deeply malicious. How could someone believe such uncertain knowledge? Perhaps it suggests that Obama seems foreign and is not a true American. The story has intuitive plausibility to some and a tinge of racism to others. Some websites have presented a string of Kenyan birth certificates, which suggests the creativity of reputational entrepreneurs. It is highly likely – and despite being an agnostic, I am tempted to say certain – that these documents with their different provenance are forgeries or fakes. But they exist because someone felt that they were worth producing. As a result, their presence is significant. Perhaps we cannot tell with certainty for all claims which are lies, but we certainly can tell that some are.

But let us move beyond the world of intentional deceptions. Here we move into negative history. This is the claim that the history that has been proposed is wrong, even if an alternative history is not proposed. The battle over what we know and what we don’t know involves facts present and facts absent. The latter is what we mean by negative history. In the case of Holocaust denial merchants of negative history suggest that there is no “smoking gun” that demonstrates that Hitler intended to commit genocide. There is no memo from the Fuhrer embracing genocide or giving the thumbs up for a gas chamber to be built at Auschwitz. Without this definitive evidence, the claim can be doubted, no matter the amount of circumstantial evidence. In a smaller and less crucial way, birthers point to gaps in the historical record – or they did until Obama chose to release his long-form birth certificate. I focus on the time previous to that release, the moment of rumor.

Were I to be challenged by a birther myself, I could go to a lockbox that I own and pass around my birth certificate. As with Obama’s, it was signed by the doctor who delivered me and it named the hospital, as was true for Obama’s long form. The legal certificate of birth – the short form – is what the state of Hawaii requires. However, it contains less information than what the older Hawaiian birth certificates provide. At the moment of discussion, we did not know at which hospital President Obama was born or the name of his physician. In other words, there was an absence of evidence that only becomes necessary if one doubted the definitive claims of the state of Hawaii.

The fact that President Obama did not whip out that birth certificate at the time of the controversy was heating up suggested several possibilities: he didn’t have one and wanted to cover up, that he believes that the issue is offensive or irrelevant, or that he has one and actually found the debate helpful as it distracted and discredited his opponents. As with those who believe the possibility of American involvement in the 9/11 attacks, these claims can, like a tarbaby, discredit those who hold to them too tightly. Those who spread the birther rumor had no facts on which to base their claims, but only had the absence of possibly relevant information. This is the form of negative history: a history of absence. In time, Obama became tired of the charade, whatever his motivation, and had his long form released. This quieted the debate, but, as was predicted, there remain some who still question the new evidence.

Obama’s religion

The claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim has a somewhat different relationship to a set of facts than does the birther claim. Here the problem is not that there are too few facts, but it is unclear what those facts mean. This involves ambiguous knowledge. What does it mean to “have” a religion, and who has the authority to make that claim?

If I wished to claim that I am a Muslim what would I need to convince you if you were doubtful? Perhaps I could demonstrate that for twenty long years I went to a mosque. One might reasonably say that if I sat in the mosque I must believe. And yet we all know that often enough people who attend church do so as a form of communal affiliation, rather than a commitment to a set of faith-based ideals. Perhaps I just wanted the approval of my friends.

But suppose I went further, and I stood here and asserted to you that I was a committed Muslim, would that convince you? Perhaps it would if you were well-disposed to me or if you felt that I was the kind of person who might be a committed Muslim.

This is where President Obama stands in his claim that he is a Christian. His website, “fight the smears,” asserts that Barack Obama is a committed Christian. He was sworn into the Senate on his family Bible. For years he attended Trinity Church of Christ on the southside of Chicago with his wife and daughters. Is that sufficient? Is this certain knowledge? Or does it remain ambiguous.

There is no doubt that Barack Obama was not always a committed Christian. His father and his stepfather were Muslims. His mother was unchurched. He attended a Muslim school in Indonesia and there is an Indonesian document, which so far as I know has not been accused of being a forgery that claims that he is Muslim.

This rumor has a different basis than the claim that Obama was born in Kenya. One cannot be born in two places. However, having a religion is more subtle. One can love both jazz and classical music. We can take our President at his word and be done with it, and that is, of course, what we do with friends and neighbors. Or we could argue that Obama has reasons for hiding his true beliefs (or nonbeliefs). They could note that he no longer regularly attends church services or might suggest that the church that he attended in Chicago held to a belief system that was somewhere between Christian liberation theology and the beliefs of the Nation of Islam. The truth is that any claim that we might make, looking into a heart or soul, always involves some measure of uncertainty. So it is hard to accept the claim as empirical fact that Barack Obama is a Muslim, but it is easier to accept a perspective that he was in his childhood a Muslim, in the way that children become what their parents say that they are and further that his commitment as a devout believer is not deep. But ultimately the question that we should ask is how do we know whether someone holds beliefs that they claim to hold. The issue here is different from negative history, but is how can we determine whether internal beliefs are what they are claimed to be.

Obama on the down-low

When we excavate the past, a past in which there is not a lengthy written trail, how should we determine what to believe? Individuals can pop up claiming that they knew us when, and they may have reasons to present motivated claims. These are assertions that are tinged by self-interest. This is surely the case with regard to assertions about Obama’s earlier years. Some claimants assert that they knew Barack Obama as a student at Columbia when he sold heroin, even to children. Such a claim stands or falls on its plausibility, but it lacks empirical support other than the claims of the parties to it. Can it pass the smell test? If the stakes are high enough, anyone can say anything.

So we come to the claim that Barack Obama snorted cocaine and had oral sex with a gay man. Should we make anything of this? Perhaps not. But we recognize that there is a claimant who is willing to go public and willing to place his reputation at some measure of risk. Of course those of us who have watched the Jerry Springer show know of the number of people who feel perfectly comfortable to place their reputations at risk in the name of fame, however stained or fleeting that fame might possibly be. Perhaps we don’t know its truth or perhaps we don’t care, or perhaps, most likely, we expect the claimant to provide independent evidence beyond what we might label as a “he said, he said” claim. It is not that the claimant doesn’t present claims; it is simply that these claims are not independent from the claimant’s motivation, and as such they cannot surmount the uncertainty of self-interest.

As a result, this is a claim that is distinct from the previous claims. For here is an account for which the president has no defense, other than the defense that it didn’t happen or that the person who makes the claim does not have the moral stature to make the claim.

In other words, the claim is not supported by a web of supportive facts. Without those facts, it falls, until we know why the claim is presented. But there is another fact at work that is connected to my argument, and that is whether it fits our cognitive models. The claim of cocaine use is almost too easy for a politician who has previously admitted his own drug use. And so we are left with the sexual claim. There are a lot of beliefs that opponents are willing – almost eager – to accept about Barack Obama, but the claim of homosexuality hasn’t been taken as plausible. And perhaps our reaction to the claim has a tinge of racism as it may not seem plausible because of the weight of stereotypes about black sexuality. We understand from the claims that Obama was a Kenyan or a Muslim that it doesn’t necessarily take much to generate belief, but perhaps it is Obama’s family life that makes the story incredible or perhaps it is the racist belief that African-Americans are hyper-sexual. The Obama website “Fight the Smears” finds twenty-eight smears to debunk. However, this is not one of them. Perhaps they cannot debunk it, but it is more likely that Team Obama considers this so far outside public notice that they feel that any response will spread it further. It is a claim that is beneath contempt.

Barack the socialist

The final example – is the President a socialist? – differs from the others in that the claim is less a question of fact than it is a question of interpretation. This is a complicated claim for a number of reasons. The first links with the claim of Obama’s religion. Over the course of a life people change their political perspectives. There is a famous saying that perhaps originating with President John Adams that suggests in its current form that “anyone who is not a liberal at twenty has no heart, and anyone who is not a conservative at forty has no brain.” We expect political beliefs to evolve over a lifespan. A communist Obama at 20 could become a pragmatic Obama at 50. For the record I am not asserting that either one necessarily applies.

Still the question is what does it mean to be a “socialist” in the context of America in 2012. Bill Clinton might remind us that it is all a question “of what ‘is,’ is.” It is a question of what being a socialist is. To be sure, for many, there is a sense that being a socialist is simply being a “bad guy.” It is a pejorative term without much concrete meaning. But this is not entirely the case, since a conservative Republican would not be attacked as a “socialist,” but as a “fascist.” The terms are often fuzzy, but they are not random.

Reputational entrepreneurs select labels that they feel are intuitively plausible. Socialist is one such label for a politician who wishes to extend the size and scope of government, even if it has no connection with owning the means of industrial production for the common good. Even Barack Obama’s most fervent opponents would have to admit that he has made no attempt to have government own private business, even if privately owned business have to deal with increased governmental regulation. Perhaps the single-payer health care system that President Obama once claimed that he favored and subsequently backed away from comes closest to a socialist nostrum. Still a president – any president – takes so many diverse stances that it is possible to cull them to create a reputation that seems plausible to a particular audience in light of those general reputational themes that have been established.

Is Barack Obama a socialist? It is not that the question is unanswerable. It is entirely answerable. It is simply that until there is a proper and agreed upon definition as to what it means to be a socialist, there is not an agreement on the criteria by which we judge the answer. The claim is more designed to shape a reputation than it is to designate a political perspective, and as such, it stands outside a regime of truth.

Promiscuous facts and uncertain knowledge

The world is filled with so many truth claims that a wide range of beliefs can follow from them. I refer to promiscuous facts, but it is important to note that a fact is simply a claim that a population believes has a direct connection to empirical reality. Fortunately in most cases the consensus is substantial, and so those of us who lack direct knowledge that permits us to judge things like whether the earth is spherical can rest comfortably knowing that few will roil the waters of belief. Much of what we know is secondhand, but is, for all practical purposes, certain.

But I focus on uncertainty. These are claims that are up-for-grabs with groups fighting over their legitimacy or claims that are unlikely, again as judged by groups that serve as gatekeepers to knowledge.

Sometimes the process works, but at other times it misleads. It is here that forgetting and ignorance come into play. Forgetting is not the opposite of memory, but rather memory is the precursor to forgetting. One cannot forget something that hasn’t been known once. Knowledge needs a sponsor to avoid being forgotten. Often this sponsor is an educational institution, but it could be popular culture or familial or communal tradition. The information that is forgotten may differ in how easy it is to retrieve: it could be information found in a library or a website or it could be personal information that had once been held in memory. The information is fragile, and what was once fairly certain, such as the dangers of a coming ice age can be replaced by the dangers of global warming. The dangers of margarine can be replaced with the dangers of butter, which can then be replaced by the dangers of trans-fat. Old truths, once certain, can waste away, lacking a recognized sponsor. When a rumor or political claim no longer serves a purpose, it can fade such as the claims about George W. Bush’s DUI arrest, prominent in the final week of the 2000 presidential campaign, but not much afterwards. By 2017, if not before, the Obama stories, those that are true and those that are not, will also fade.

Ignorance is different, although knowledge when forgotten for a sufficient period can become ignorance. Knowledge requires a sponsor. Lacking this sponsor, orphaned knowledge is at risk. Ignorance can serve the purpose of various actors, what we refer to as agnotology. A particularly dramatic instance concerns the tobacco industry attempts to claim that all the evidence is not in regarding the health effects of smoking. Of course, they are correct in this claim in that there is always more evidence to be gathered, but we always decide that at some point enough is enough.

Knowledge involves a truth claim made by particular actors and judged by others. It is connected to domains of power. Some knowledge is true for all practical purposes; other knowledge is doubtful or even false, again for all practical purposes. The beliefs about Barack Obama that I have addressed are far from certain. But how we judge them is a result of the relationship of their claimants to the nexus of judgment. Claims are easy to make, but whether they are accepted depends on community standards. As such, certain knowledge is a claim that stands defended.

We have just experienced the season of gifts, a moment at which images of plummy consumption dance in our heads. And I had a gift in mind. A magazine, or perhaps, a certain website.

I am a serial reader, and, sometimes, a reader of serials. As the Deliberately Considered audience knows – because I have admitted in cyber-print – I have ogled Glenn Beck: less as harassment or flirtation, and more as an imagined discourse. I promiscuously read conservatives and progressives – and others in left, right, and libertarian venues. I live by The New Yorker, I conserve the Weekly Standard, I reason with Reason, and Mother Jones is Mom. However, I have long regretted that I cannot get a daily dosage of civic nutriment in a single journalistic bowl. I hold to a somewhat eccentric contention that there are smart liberals (neo- and old-timey, pink and pinker), conservatives (neo- and paleo-), progressives, reactionaries, socialists, libertarians, and more. Is my generosity so bizarre?

It has been argued that one of the fundamental problems in American political culture is that citizens tend to read narrowly. Those who consider themselves conservatives will not squander their lives reading liberal intellectuals, and the same is true of liberals, should they even admit to such a creature as a conservative intellectual. The divide between red and blue is as evident in the library as in the voting booth. This argument was made most compellingly by the ever diverting Cass Sunstein in his 2001 book, Republic.Com. Sunstein argued that we feel comfortable in segregated domains of knowledge in which:

“People restrict themselves to their own points of view – liberals watching and reading mostly or only liberals; moderates, moderates; conservatives, conservatives; neo-Nazi, neo-Nazis.”

People reside in gated communities of knowledge. This is what the sociologist David Maines, referring to epistemic divisions between blacks and whites, described as racialized pools of knowledge. Our pools, suitable for private skinny dipping, are political. But if we are truly interested in the play of ideas, this chasm is a dispiriting reality. Of what are we afraid?

On the empirical side, there has been debate as to the validity of Sunstein’s claim as applicable to blog sites, at least according to a research paper by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. They discover that many political junkies are omnivores, reading widely.

But, putting aside web freebies, on the organizational side the argument seems more compelling. Gentzkow and Shapiro’s argument, if confirmed, applies to blogs like Deliberately Considered, but perhaps less to paper-and-ink magazines, where one must place one’s money where one’s politics is.

And so each week I open my copy of The New Yorker with a weary expectation. Yes, as they explain, it is the best magazine in America. Yet, it is surely predictable. Recently, Hendrik Hertzberg weighed in on Newt Gingrich (back when he was the front runner, in a piece entitled “Alt-Newt”) and, surprise!, he doesn’t think much of the former speaker. The New Yorker has not been kind to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, or Herman Cain either. Also, The New Yorker won’t embrace Ron Paul, and someone is surely generating cold thoughts about Rick Santorum. Newt, we are told, is lousy writer, a hypocrite, and more of a megalomaniac than most potential presidents. Hertzberg’s essay is beautifully crafted, and it is not false as much as it is unanswered. There are those who write with glee and panache against the current incumbent, not only from the left, but from the right. But subscribers will never hear them. Then there is The New York Times whose stable of columnists range from (mostly) deep blue to light purple. Neither David Brooks nor Ross Douthat, thoughtful men both, are movement conservatives. William Kristol was chased off the reservation by patricians with pitchforks. Would one red-meat conservative violate the Gray Lady? Perhaps The Atlantic comes closest to this model, but the distance is still real.

What I wish for is a journal that is committed to excellence with ideological generosity. Perhaps there is not an audience for such a venture, despite the suggestion of Gentzkow and Shapiro, but I fantasize that Bill Buckley and Max Lerner could share a page. Charles Krauthammer and Frank Rich, too.

If one already knows that one knows, such a project is fundamentally misguided. Why read the wrong along with the right? However, for those of us who embrace independence, uncertainty and confusion are thrilling. A magazine that is neither red nor blue but multi-hued is a gift most devoutly to be wished for. It is not only that we wish to read clever writers, but we need to imagine a rainbow of clever ideas. Under my tree, I imagine a magazine that I cannot predict before opening the cover: a periodical of intellectual astonishment. A journal that is generously considered.

Let us pretend that we might be persuaded, and then read accordingly.

I am addicted to Glenn Beck. Don’t misunderstand, I do not love Glenn Beck, nor do I sing in his chorus of the righteous. But neither am I a Beck-hater, feeling that he is – as he speaks of mega-billionaire George Soros – a “spooky dude.” Further, I am no Beckaholic (Mr. Beck, a recovering alcoholic, might appreciate this). If I miss a night, don’t look for me on a ledge. If I watch too much, don’t search for me in the gutter. However, I prefer that my day ends with a shot of Beck and bourbon. (In California, my current home base, Beck’s show airs at 11:00 p.m.).

Academics often find themselves in deep shade, hidden from bright public debate. Despite our striving for impact, few pay us mind. We dream of celebrity, but on our own terms, and we worry that the unwashed masses will not understand (lecturing to unwashed students makes this concern more plausible). When academics reach the spotlight, it has sometimes been for plagiarism (Doris Kearns Goodwin), losing control (Henry Louis Gates), or political misdemeanors that suggest that a Ph.D. is no substitute for a heart (Newt Gingrich). Perhaps we should lust for dim obscurity. The attentions of Mr. Beck suggest a certain benefit of anonymity over infamy. Beck pays the academy the uncertain honor of believing that we count for something. He believes our writings can change the world, much as Jesse Helms insisted that contemporary art really, truly mattered enough to be censored. Beck scopes the intellectual barricades to find those he presents as cultural subversives, reporting to his million-man audience about the moral felonies of Edward Bernays, Stuart Chase, Walter Lippmann, and, the most dangerous man in America, Cass Sunstein, professor at Harvard Law School and Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Pre-Beck, such a list would seem eccentric. Post-Beck, the list seems alternatively mad, malevolent, and revelatory. Despite his biting attacks, Beck is insistent on proclaiming the mantra of non-violence. Gandhi is a hero. But on Beck’s website some responses are not so gentle. To be sure, under the cloak of anonymity these angry posts may be from organized detractors who desire to discredit or penned by battlers who believe that Beck is insufficiently hard-edged.

The distinguished former president of the American Sociological Association Frances Fox Piven ranks in Beck’s list of the nine most dangerous people (the only woman) for her embrace of the disinfecting power of disruption, whether in Greece or Greensboro. (She and I have both served as presidents of the activist Society for the Study of Social Problems). Beck speaks of Professor Piven as an enemy of the Constitution, but this curious charge is rather like a Pentacostal finding that the Amish and the Methodists are enemies of the Bible. Whose Bible is it? Whose Constitution? The title of Piven’s last book, Challenging Authority, could reasonably be the title of Mr. Beck’s next. He is, after all, the author of a book “Inspired by Thomas Paine.” For their critics each is a royal Paine.

Glenn Beck is an endowed professor for the aggrieved, presenting cracked knowledge. Many of his shows are lectures delivered with more brio, comic patter, and multi-media panache than I could ever muster. He is quite the performer, often so much so that I easily fall into the rhythm of his cadence, too entranced to think hard about each claim.

Beck mines history with gusto, as if the past mattered for the present. In this, he is the student of which every historian dreams, at least until his parsing of reputations is considered. Most Americans (those that do not tune in to Beck) might be puzzled that Stuart Chase, the progressive economist, or Edward Benays, the psychologist of persuasion, still matter, but Beck emphasizes the archeology of ideas. Ideas do not die; they become the substructure of action. To his credit Beck takes seriously what many find dusty and archaic. Even when he gets his interpretations wrong or misleads (yes, he does), the genealogy of the American dream and its current corrosion is made dramatic. Beck reserves a special place in hell for the progressive Woodrow Wilson, no angel for anyone, left, right, or center, but not the one-dimensional controller that Beck despises.

Beck’s hatred for Marxists has recently waned – not that he likes them, evident in occasional nostalgic attacks on former Green Czar Van Jones or recent critiques in slightly paler pink of our current president. Rather in his recent lectures his bullet points are aimed at progressives. For Beck, a progressive is not just a slippery label for a liberal. What revolts Beck – and he is in revolt – is the idea of elites, hiding their power beneath the blanket of service. Beck rejects a world of expertise: an unelected high and mighty. At various moments, this idea would have placed him in lockstep with many on the left who also worry about puppetmasters. Perhaps the villains wear different masks, but the New World Order – and the George Soros’s and Dick Cheney’s who build it – is not only a gimcrack notion of one extreme.

Beck has recently begun to lecture about the ranchers and the cows. Viewers are the cows in his anti-Western. The elites wish to fence cows in and insure that any cow that wishes to break free is grilled for dinner at Davos. These ranchers are the smartest kids in the room. Can there be any wonder that Cass Sunstein’s Nudge is a particular bête noir? Sunstein wishes to control the cows, not by force, but without their even knowing of the control. In this Beck is almost a French intellectual, a Foucaultian of the heartland.

Beck has an agenda for how we are to live. He plumbs for Hope. Faith. Charity. But what are the problematic political subtexts of these bracing words? As a quasi-Libertarian Beck claims that we are capable of competent and conscious choice. We are each Shrugging Atlases. Edward Bernays with his adman’s slights-of-hand and the bleak and chill wisdom of Freud and progressives must be muscularly opposed. Collective projects and their benefits can vanish in a puff of individualism.

For Beck, progressives offend by believing that they can remake the world. Just like – ta-dah – the Nazis. In the American rhetoric of grievance everything goes back to Adolf with an occasional nod to Stalin. Put in Beckspeak, “Nazi tactics were progressive tactics first.” We must struggle against totalitarianism. A fair reading of Frances Fox Piven suggests that she and Beck might agree in their desires to devolve power to the local. Both speak for the dispossessed and both confront and discomfort a system that is fundamentally broken and run by those few who continue to benefit against popular desire.

Beck believes that today government is run by radical elites; others still see conservative elites. The question is where does power lie? How can power be retrieved by the governed? These are, of course the right questions. With his colorful attempts to retrieve the thinkers who made us as we are, Beck performs a service. He is worth considering. Still, listening to Glenn Beck at midnight does not always result in restful sleep. Sometimes those rough patches of slumber are because of what he gets right and sometimes they are because of what he gets wrong. But in either case, these troubles require an awakening.