The Eye of Moloch by Glenn Beck

 This book is the sequel to The Overton Window by Beck. Molly's little band of freedom fighters are on the run from government forces, and not likely to make it to any safe haven soon. Ben has been imprisoned for a while, then conscripted into the armed force pursuing them, though he has no stomach for it. His father's organization continues to manipulate the government and people of the U.S. through its control of the media narrative. As they said in The Princess Bride, "It would take a miracle..."

This story seems pretty unrelentingly dark throughout, which is what the author is going for - to convey the sense of hopelessness that Molly and her bodyguard Thom Hollis and Ben all are feeling against the overwhelming odds.

A great deal of the book is spent exploring the points of view of the bad guys, like white supremacist George Pierce, and Warren Landers, the leader of mercenary corporation Talion, Arthur Gardner's right hand man, and Aaron Doyle, the shadowy figure at the top of the pyramid of Earth's secret masters.

A quote from the lips of Warren Landers, to George Pierce:

"In your own language, then, abortion on demand has murdered seventeen million blacks, and counting...We've normalized the voluntary termination of their babies into just another form of birth control - and a sacred civil right of liberated, empowered women. That's the illusion we've created to make another genocidal weapon in the race war you've always wanted."

Interesting perspective on abortion on demand, eh?

And another interesting bit:

"This 'kill list' to which Mr. Landers referred was a relatively new development, at least among governments that still tipped their hats to the rule of law. Together with a small contingent of advisors the President would regularly meet to nominate and then pass judgement on foreign (and now domestic) 'militant' individuals deemed eligible for termination without the benefit of due process."

If you're not too sure this can actually happen in this country, check out Beck's afterword at the back, with references to all of the scary scenarios he describes in the book. See the National Defense Authorization Act, which legalizes martial law in the U.S., allows the military to indefinitely detain people without trial, and authorizes drone strikes on American soil, if the person is determined to be "engaged in combat" against the U.S. We've already killed American citizens without benefit of a trial overseas, it's a slippery slope to do it here, too. Maybe you trust the current administration not to do it, but what about the next? It's very seldom that the federal government voluntarily limits or recants its powers.

I hope and pray that it never comes to the state of affairs described in this book, but it's just a hop, skip and a jump away if we're not careful about the erosion of our freedoms.

Not quite as good, perhaps, as the first book, so we'll see how things wrap up in the final installment of the trilogy.

Agenda 21 by Glen Beck

They just don't write dystopian fiction like they used to. Agenda 21 is the tale of Emmeline, who dwells in a compound run by the Authorities along with dozens? hundreds? thousands? (we never really know) of other folks who have been removed from their land and lives by the results of the UN's Agenda 21, a radical green program which forces most of them to walk on a treadmill most of the day producing enough energy to "pay back" the government for the cost of feeding and housing them. Others are assigned as transport workers, manually towing the carts that move people and goods from place to place, caregivers, who watch over the children in the Authorities' crèche, or gatekeepers, who keep track of all the people in each compound, and report all their movements to the Authorities.

Emmeline appears to be the only child who was actually raised by her parents, the rest have been educated by the state, and know an entirely different version of history than she has been taught. There are hints that there may be other "home schooled" around somewhere, as she is mocked a couple of times for being "one of them". The Authorities even control who will mate with one another, pairing fertile couples to keep the population steady.

I think Beck and his co-writer are trying to go for a Katniss Everdeen type of heroine here, but I'm not sure they got there. Emmeline's mother, we find out after she is taken away for some imagined offense and "recycled", left Emmeline some illegal and subversive materials concealed in her sleeping mat; a map of the United States, a knife, a bible, and some matches, as well as some relatively innocuous photographs of happier times. Emmeline finally goes rogue when her baby daughter, Elsa, is going to be taken away to be raised by the government elsewhere. This happens near the end of the book, and I think the authors are planning on some sequel action.

Don't bother.

Broke by Glenn Beck

People either seem to love Glenn Beck, his tv and radio shows, and his writings, or they simply hate him. I find his sense of humor wonderfully sarcastic, and usually enjoy what he has to say in his books, which are perhaps not as dramatic as his shows. I'm definitely a numbers kind of guy, and Beck lays out plenty of numbers in Broke, without it being mind-numbingly overpowering.

For the most part, he remains fairly non-partisan in this book, laying out the historical evidence why NO administration nor congress since shortly after the turn of the eighteenth century has been fiscally responsible. In the early days of the United States, debts incurred by the federal government, primarily in fighting wars, were discharged as quickly as possible, and to be perfectly fair, taxes were often raised to accomplish that goal, but as soon as the debt was paid, the taxes were discontinued, unlike what happens all too often at all levels of government today. Anyone remember when they told us the raise from 3% to 5% sales tax in Idaho was just temporary?

One passage I found interesting:
"...(President) Johnson's God complex led him to choose the bombing targets himself during weekly luncheons - Tuesdays worked best for his schedule - with no military representatives present. Johnson and two civilian aides literally sat and handpicked the targets (for bombing during the Vietnam War)."

Anyone see any parallels today?

Beck spends about two thirds of the book making the case that our government is out of control (especially with regards to spending), and really doesn't distinguish, as more partisan folks might, betweeen entitlement spending and defense spending as to their relative merits or blame for the problem. It seems common sense to me, though I'm not a Nobel prize winning economist by any stretch of the imagination, that a government, like a household or a business, cannot continue to spend more than it takes in, year after year, decade after decade, without paying the piper at some point. The results of our debt problem could be catastrophic for the U.S., and for the world as well.

His prescription for the solution, however logical and necessary it appears to be, will just flat never happen, I'm afraid. The political will doesn't exist and never has to do what must be done to solve the debt crisis, and by the time we are feeling the pain deeply enough in this country to actually vote out the spineless and corrupt politicians we have today and vote in folks who will do what needs to be done, without any consideration for whether they will be re-elected the next term or not, I fear it may be too late.

The biggest part of the solution, Beck says, is threefold:
1) Pass a balanced budget amendment.
2) Pass a term limits amendment.
3) Pass a line item veto amendment.

Do you seriously think any politician in power today has any real interest in doing these things, much less a majority of those politicians? We're hosed.

Read the book if you want to know more, especially about the history of our massive deficit spending.

One thing that struck me, as I was in the early chapters of this book, was triggered by something Beck wrote:

"Americans don't want to be deceived, but we do want hope. We want to know that if we do our part, work hard, play by the rules, live within our means, then things will turn out all right in the end."

I think this is very true. However, there appear to be two dynamically opposed viewpoints in this country today.

The first viewpoint is that if we do all of the things listed above, somehow or other, the government at either a federal, state, or local level, will do something to screw it up. They'll pass a law, regulation, or requirement that trips us up and keeps us from succeeding, or they'll levy a tax, fee or surcharge that destroys our ability to achieve our dreams.

The second viewpoint is that even if we do all of these things, in some manner "The Man" will conspire to keep us down, to show us our place, and to ensure the status quo. Therefore, only the government, in its slow but steady progress, can provide remedy, redress and recompense, and guarantee that we are taken care of, treated fairly, and given a chance.

I think there are certain points where both of these views are true, places where we can compromise, times when we can get closer to real life. I also think that our political class exploits these extremes in their unending grasp for power, and far too many of them profess to believe in one or the other, but their actions in office belie their commitment.

I'm not sure how we get beyond the extremes at the end of the spectrum and find a solution that works to preserve freedom, opportunity and the pursuit of happiness once again, but certainly it can't be through massive financial irresponsibility, can it?

The Overton Window by Glenn Beck

The Overton Window is the story of Noah Gardner, the privileged son of an advertising agency giant, who becomes aware, finally, that there are more momentous things going on in the world around him than his amusements and sexual conquests. One day at work at his father's business, he notices an intern, Molly Ross, posting an announcement about a political meeting held by an organization that is part of the Tea Party movement. Suddenly smitten by her obvious physical charms, he attempts to charm her, and when that doesn't work, decides to attend the meeting, to try and get to know her better, probably for the purpose of seducing her, but it soon turns into more of an obsession than mere lust.

At approximately the same time, Noah attends the first part of a meeting with a group of government agents who are concerned that a secret memo published by their department, planning for a Homeland Security emergency, and which will violate some groups' civil rights, has become public. Noah's father, Arthur, presents them with a plan to discredit the memo, and to further advance a progressive agenda that has been slowly encroaching on civil liberties in the U.S. for decades.

Noah attends the patriots' meeting later that evening, and is present when a group of provocateurs start trouble there, and the New York police immediately break up the meeting and throw most of the participants into jail. Noah's father's lawyer is able to get Noah released, but in an inexplicable streak of altruism, Noah convinces his lawyer that the whole bust was a setup from the beginning and the lawyer manages to get the rest of the detainees released, as well.

The Overton window of the title turns out later on in the story to refer to a method of visualizing the changes introduced over time to the canon of acceptable political dialogue in this country. For example, it would have been inconceivable twenty years ago that people would submit to full body scans and patdowns by TSA agents in order to fly anywhere in this country, but as incremental security measure changes have been slowly added, each necessitated by some perceived threat or crisis, we have now come to accept those practices, for the most part. The same thing applies to no-knock warrants, national security letters, and the propagation of SWAT teams in police departments all over the country.

Beck doesn't definitely attribute all of this to some vast progressive conspiracy, exactly, but fits it into the framework of a progressive agenda worldwide which acts upon the assumption that the elite, whether political or economic, are the only people who are capable of "ruling", and have stealthily taken over our government, through the process of corrupting our elected officials.

In a scenario reminiscent of Rahm Emmanuel's quote, "never let a crisis go to waste", Arthur Gardner and his fellow progressive manipulators have set into motion a plot that will incriminate the Tea Party types in an attack using an atomic bomb on an American City. When it comes to fruition, it will result in the arrest and internment of huge numbers of people deemed subversive by the Department of Homeland Security. The "thriller" portion of the novel is the tale of how some of Molly's friends and Noah discover the plot and attempt to thwart it.

There are vast swaths of this book that are pure Founding Fathers political writings, proclaimed and discussed by Molly and her fellow travelers, and a ton of facts and events ripped from recent headlines that make this novel not as far-fetched as it might seem at first. There's a wealth of references and additional information included in the back of the book, and Beck makes no bones about the fact that he intends this novel to be a wake up call for its readers, and to get them thinking about where this country is headed.

As far as thrillers go, the story wasn't all that tense, but it's certainly a thought-provoking read.

Arguing with Idiots by Glenn Beck

Visually, this book reminds me of a middle school history textbook. It's got sidebars and pull quotes, cartoons, charts, graphs, and what look like hand-written post-it notes. That was a little distracting at times, but I think it would work quite well as a text on government for middle-schoolers, certainly better than most of the drivel they're begin fed these days.

If you've ever watched Beck's tv show, or listened to his radio program, you know most of this subject matter already. There are no new, astounding revelations here, just a rehash of the things he's been saying for years. His style is irreverent and iconoclastic, and he opines on gun rights, the unions, illegal immigration, big government, the nanny state, and Obamacare.

I think perhaps the most intriguing chapter is the one on illegal immigration. Beck attacks some of the popular wisdom on this subject, which even conservatives spout every so often. Regarding "illegals do the jobs Americans won't", he believes that if employers didn't have the ready supply of cheap labor available, they'd have to offer a reasonable wage to American workers, who would be happy to take the jobs, and cites examples of a meat processing company that was forced to replace illegals with Americans after a series of raids by INS. When they raised pay to attract citizens, hundres lined up to apply.

Regarding "illegal workers are vital to keeping things cheap", he mentions that labor makes up only about 6% of the cost of fresh produce, for example, so eliminating illegal labor would only raise the cost of produce about $8 a year for the average family. Also, the tax burden caused by illegals making use of government services, when - at their low income levels- they pay no taxes, could in theory be eliminated, thus stimulating the economy as businesses are left with more money to hire and invest.

The only problem with this book is that the people who will read it already believe it, and the people who should read it, won't.