Beck Zedong!

Glenn Beck’s got a one hundred year plan (oh, shit):

“We need to start thinking like the Chinese.”

In other words, Glenn Beck thinks that focused, insurgent, belligerent, fanatically committed mass movement Maoism—with its disciplined cell groups, ideological purity, and relentless propaganda—is the right model, tactically, for the advancing of “conservatism” in the 21st century. How ironic is that?

Reason? Seriousness? Dialogue? Maturity? Calm? Suspicion of mass emotion? Nah. Mao.

Mao! 

Here’s how Conor Friedersdorf puts Beck Zedong’s bright idea:

It includes a series of adult education seminars where citizens will be taught political activism, self-reliance, and the dread community organizing. The often tearful Fox News personality also promises a book that will include more specifics. “We need to start thinking like the Chinese,” Mr. Beck said at a recent rally. “I’m developing a 100 year plan for America.”

Andrew Sullivan rightly nails this latest inanity to come out of Teabagger Land:

[T]he vessel for rethinking will not come from proud ignoramuses and populist Elmer Gantrys. It will not come from reiterating propaganda but from confronting unpleasant facts about conservatism’s recent catastrophic failures and mistakes. They’re not thinking; they’re emoting. They’re not engaged in reforming conservatism; they’re engaged in escapist denialism about real problems. They are a sign of profound cultural sickness, not resurgent political and civic health.

The flies change but the shit is the same. If you wonder why the Republican Party is undergoing a purging of moderates from its ranks, this reading of Mao’s essay, “Combat Liberalism”, is helpful. It’s not hard to see how a person like Glenn Beck could find a monomaniacal person like Mao Zedong tactically informative: