Off-putting cover (Beck posing as "book czar"), flippant title, but above average content. Most surprising thing in this book: Beck's sympathy for the U.S. Postal Service. It isn't entirely their fault. Every time they try to run the Post Office like a business, Congress steps in and says they have to do something that will lose money faster than a slasher-movie victim loses blood. Ditto Amtrak, which is forced by Congress to keep certain routes even though they lose money. This book is as loaded with thought-provoking facts as it is with opinion. I would only quibble with some things. For example, the first chapter is a defense of capitalism according to its title, but since the defense is necessarily against the advocacy of capitalism's replacement by socialism, it soon turns into a critique of government and its inefficiency in running itself or the economy. Fine, but the title should probably have reflected that topic. Also, at one point in this chapter Beck makes what at first sounds like a good point, that if government itself acknowledges periodically that it needs reforming (at least eleven times in the twentieth century by Beck's count) why not reform capitalism instead of declaring that it doesn't work and throwing it away? OK, except that "reforming" capitalism is precisely what has gone on and is arguably going on even now. If you think capitalism is a good idea, you don't like the kind of reform to which it has been subjected. As Beck says elsewhere in the same chapter, you can have capitalism within a socialist system, it just doesn't work very well compared to what Beck calls democratic capitalism, by which he seems to mean something closer to what most would call laissez faire.

In any case, this book is extremely readable, witty (sometimes puckishly so), and irreverent. The book is designed like a textbook for intelligent adolescents and is pretty much written at an eighth or ninth grade level. It's sidebars are faux-pasted or taped in. Some sidebars provide a quote attacking capitalism with multiple choice answers including Venezuelan Marxist Presidente Hugo Chavez but also American and Western European politicians and others. Instructively, the right attribution might turn out to be Chavez in one instance but in another instance it might turn out to be the former head of General Electric. It cannot be repeated too often that capitalists are often the worst--not to say the most insidious--promoters of socialism. (Even back in 1776, Adam Smith complained that capitalists themselves too often conspire against the free market, and Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" is an allegory about the marriage of capitalism and socialism.)

As flippant as Beck's use of the word "idiots" might seem, there actually is an ancient precedent for it: the original use of the word goes back to ancient Athens where an "idiotes" was a person who didn't believe in voting or democracy. So Beck's use of the term to mean something like a person who doesn't believe in "democratic capitalism" adheres more closely to the word's earliest definition than it does to the meaning in common parlance of a person who is simply too stupid or uniformed to deserve civil treatment. Indeed, Beck's presentation of the on-going argument between an imaginary liberal and himself gives the "idiot" the most impertinent and insulting lines while Beck's persona in the book provides fact-based counter-arguments that are sometimes quite consiliatory. Indeed, Beck sometimes performs what has been called the "Ransberger Pivot" whereby you begin to answer a flawed argument by expressing agreement with the other person's underlying concern before explaining to them that their conclusion and or solution is not as good as yours, but you make the point that your approach does take their underlying concern seriously. That is an argument of and for persuasion and not outright rejection.

Throughout the book, Beck looks at the posiitions of American presidents and eventually presents a chapter reevaluating them. His idea of arranging a "smackdown" in which presidents are put up against each other as in a play-off is funny but appears to get a bit complex. As a presidency buff myself, I look forward to this chapter, however, and so far I think Beck has it essentially right: It doesn't matter as much whether they are nominally Democrats or Republicans (or whatever, since those two labels didn't exist during the earliest history of our republic), so much as their views about whether the government is bound to observe the Constitution's constraints or else regard those constraints as an obstacle to the reorganization of the whole government-private sector relationship and seriously dilute the "private" part. That is what makes the difference between a president like Grover Cleveland, who vetoed spending bills based on his view that they were unconstitutional, and Barack Obama, who shows no sign of regarding any of his party's passed or proposed bills as exceeding the government's Constitutional authority. Both Cleveland and Obama are nominal Democrats, albeit over a century apart. ( )

Book on CD read by the author, Steve (Stu) Bergiere, and Pat Gray
1*

I’d never heard of Glenn Beck, but apparently, he has a popular radio show. Now that I’ve heard of him, I’ll be sure to never listen to his show.

My major problem with this was that, while Beck may have some coherent and well-researched responses to many issues, he chose to over-exaggerate the opposing viewpoint – i.e. calling anyone who voices an opposing viewpoint an idiot. In some cases he didn’t even argue the point. Painting the opposition with such a wide brush just reduces the effectiveness of his arguments rather than strengthen them.

Beck voices the audio along with two talented performers. However, I was really irritated with the “voice” of the “idiots” and wished I could speed up the delivery. I wound up reading the last two chapters in text format. I’d give the audio ZERO stars. ( )

Some good points, although rather inflammatory and confrontational in nature. ( )

Wow. Had to make up for all the M. Moore books. But I'd take Micheal any day. Although Glen has some good points He is still too ... something... and gets people too stirred up with his attitude. Many grains of salt are needed in any political book. This one should come with a shaker. ( )

This book can be described in one word: specious.

The amount of logical fallacies and sourcing follies for ten writers and nine contributors is mind-numbing. Red herrings abound. Implying that the cherry picked comparisons are the only options. The Logic 101 fails are beyond numerous and epic.Even more frustrating is their use of an index format collection of citations at the end - makes fact checking so laborious that I gave up after the second chapter. It took too much to try to figure out what was cited and what was editorial. And a majority of the citations were from blogs and tabloid articles! Some from Beck's own blog... Fact-checking books like these can be a fun exercise that usually counter balances the loss of brain cells suffered by reading them, but they made it too exhausting to get even that little benefit.

He/they were so off base of two subjects I know quite a bit about: energy and health care. I was stunned at the wrong-wing rhetoric. well, not really. And the chapters on unions, presidents, economy, etc... inane and made worse by the perpetual random unrelated ad hominem pop ups saturated with sarcasm. The only chapter that had a semblance of intelligence was on education. Undermined, unfortunately, by his propensity for out-of-nowhere Pelosi-isms.

Disclosure: I thought Beck was an idiot before I read this. Arguing with Himself confirmed my opinion.

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