This week I have seen about 50 people post this Glenn Beck “leak video” and so after seeing it for the 49th time I decided to make a comment on it…

At first when I saw the title of the video that read, “Glenn Beck uses Vicks to Cry” I have to emit I was taken back. I don’t listen to his program too often but when I do I have taken note that he does cry like a pre-teen girl at the premier of the Twilight sequel. I have even heard him say, “I cry more by 10:00AM than a two year old cries all day.” The man cries at the drop of a hat, what can I say, but when I saw this video I was a little upset to learn that his crying was all an act. So I watched the video and was surprised yet again to learn that the video is not of Beck doing his TV show or radio show staging tears between commercial breaks but rather a video of Beck doing a photo shoot where he is pretending to cry!

Are these people trying to make something out of nothing? I mean seriously, let’s think about the context here for a minute. I remember the summer of my junior year in high school, my mom scheduled a photo shoot for my senior pictures. I had to stop everything I was doing for fun and dress up in a suit and tie, drive to a studio downtown in the scorching heat and then stand in front of a camera and pretend I was happy so the pictures would turn out good. No don’t get me wrong I was not depressed when I was getting my senior pictures taken, but by no means did I have any reason to smile other than the fact that that’s what the photographer wanted me to do considering the circumstances.

Now with that said, I do think it’s a little lame to do a photo shoot where you are pretending to cry, but Beck has the right to do any lame or stupid thing his little heart desires. The thing I find more ridiculous than Beck pretending to cry for a photo opp is the big deal liberals and even libertarians are making out of this! I can see someone calling him a deceiver if he was doing this for his TV show or radio program, but he clearly is not! In fact I would even go as far as to say that if Becks’ whaling like an infant was staged on his show that he would need Vick’s for that too. Or if he can fake cry on command as some might think than why would have he used Vick’s to make himself cry for this video? Its an arbitrary argument and a pathetic one at that.

Most of my facebook friends who have posted this are libertarians and are circulating it like it’s going out of style because they hate Glenn Beck. Libertarians despise Glenn Beck they think he is a liar and they believe he is destroying our country. One guy I talked with this week said I was part of the “Glenn Beck Deception” for standing up for him. And so let me say this about that:

By no means would I say that I agree with Glenn Beck on all of the issues, I wouldn’t even go as far as to call him a libertarian, yet. But Beck has come a long way since his “are Ron Paul supporters terrorists?” days. Glenn Beck is the only cult of personality who gives Ron Paul and other libertarian leaning candidates the time of day by having them on his show and taking them seriously. Someone has said to me that they don’t trust Beck because he used to practically worship Bush and he made fun of Ron Paul when he ran for president. This guy told me his beef with beck goes back quite a while.

“He was a big cheerleader for Bush and Iraq until it wasn’t cool. He DID bad mouth Ron Paul and called him a whack until there was evidence that there was a following beginning to…form. Then he embraced him. I do not trust him. He talks the talk but I don’t think he’ll walk the walk if the winds change again.”

All good points and I agree with him 100%! But I too was once a Bush worshiping idiot and I followed Bush blindly for about four years. I have since learned a lot and done a lot of my own research and can tell you I will never vote for or endorse another neo-con like Bush again! I am a different person and I don’t care if it’s popular or not! I am a stubborn headed libertarian with strict sets of principles. I can not speak for Beck because I do not know him personally, I do not know if he will become a Republican cheerleader again when it’s popular or not. But as of right now he is not, so I won’t waste my time criticizing him. If he starts backtracking you better believe I will be the first to call him out. But until then we need to hone in on principle.

If we treat everyone who changes their mind and joins our side the way we treat Beck no one is going to want to change and become a part of our movement.

I highly encourage you all to read Michael Badnarik’s speech entitled “An Obituary for the Libertarian party”. I met him for breakfast in Harrisburg one morning and he and I talked about these very same issues that I am now talking about and I strongly believe he and I are on the same page when it comes to this.

I am not asking people to trust Beck, that’s the last thing I want them to do! I believe in the philosophy of ‘question all authority’. I am just saying if we want to light the fires of liberty within individuals we need to do it in an honorable way!

In conclusion, Becks’ Lincoln worship thing at his rally bugs me too. And so does a lot of other things about him, but he has been getting better and my hope is he continues to progress. People don’t become avid libertarians overnight – it took me about two years. And it may take Beck longer. He may be faking it but that’s not for me to judge. All I know is if we want to build a movement and take back our country we aren’t going to help our cause by giving every convert an anal examination. It’s almost like libertarians believe that unless your first natural political thought wasn’t a libertarian thought or if you weren’t “born a libertarian” into the “royal blood” than you’re not a “true” libertarian, and therefore an enemy and a socialist. Libertarians would have more friends if they treated the ones they had a little better. I yield back my time.