As if the prospect of Willard lying his way into power weren't frightening enough, we now have more evidence of the utterly fraudulent nature of the "Moderate Mitt" image that he's trying to sell us. David Corn has revealed Willard's profoundly unsettling ties to the lunatic right in a compelling post at Mother Jones, located right here: Follow me beyond the Kos Croissant of Mystery for more.
First, a video of Willard introducing and effusively praising someone we all know:
Yes, this is Willard gushing about GLENN BECK. You know, the guy who regularly compared President Obama to Hitler and Lenin. The guy who was talking civil war--yes, civil war--in America as early as February 2009. The guy who said there were "Maoists" all over the Obama Administration. You know.
The borderline psychotic that was too much even for Fox "News".
Corn also zeroes in on Willard's affection for one of the most disturbing lunatics in modern American history, W. Cleon Skousen, one of the weirdest and most deranged right-wingers in history. Name not ringing a bell? Here's some of what Skousen believed:
Much-touted by Beck, Skousen was an anti-communist crusader, a purported political philosopher, a historian accused of racist revisionism, and a right-wing conspiracy theorist. He contended that the Founding Fathers were direct descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, claimed that a global cabal of bankers controlled the world from behind the scenes, and wrote a book that referred to the "blessings of slavery." Skousen, who died in 2006, taught Romney at Brigham Young University.
In a 1962 book, Skousen denounced homosexuality and noted, "Every boy should know that masturbation may be the first step to homosexuality." In his 1970 book, The Naked Capitalist, Skousen asserted that a sinister "secret society of the London-Wall Street axis"—which included the Council on Foreign Relations—controlled the world and manipulated global events, financing revolutions and aligning itself with "dictatorial forces" to preserve its power. In a 1970 article, Skousen, who was active with the John Birch Society, claimed that criticism of the Mormon church for prohibiting African Americans from its priesthood was nothing but a communist conspiracy against the church. (He also recorded a spoken-word album for the John Birch Society on the dangers of LSD.) In The Five Thousand Year Leap, a supposed history influenced by Mormon theology and published in 1981, Skousen contended that the Constitution is rooted in the bible. (Beck has heavily promoted the book to his listeners and viewers and wrote the introduction to a new edition.)
Willard endorsed a diploma-mill for-profit "university" known as George Wythe University, which included a heavy dose of Skousen in its curriculum:
Still, until 2010, George Wythe University taught Skousen's work as part of its core curricula, alongside such classics as Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Tom Paine's Common Sense. Freshmen were assigned The Five Thousand Year Leap and The Making of America, which came close to idealizing slavery, as in a passage in the book quoting a 1934 essay: "If the pickaninnies ran naked it was generally from choice, and when the white boys had to put on shoes and go away to school they were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates." While promoting The Making of America, Skousen called for eliminating a host of federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency; for selling off national parks; for ending the direct election of US senators; and for weakening the separation of church and state.
In a 2007 radio interview, Romney said that he had not read The Making of America, but that it was "worth reading." Romney cited another Skousen book to explain Mormon theology regarding the second coming of Christ. In another radio interview that year, Romney recalled taking a class at BYU on the Bible taught by Skousen, whom he called "a brilliant man and a wonderful story teller."
Romney endorsed a school that was pushing ideas
that even the National Review
and the Mormon Church considered outright lunacy. And he was pushing Glenn Beck AFTER Beck had already become notorious for his raving, unhinged diatribes against the "Communist" Barack Obama. This is the so-called "moderate" that's trying to BS his way into power.
Romney has pandered to the worst elements of the right-wing sewer. We're not going to let him get by with it. I say we use this political weapon, and any other we have to stop him.
The future of our nation depends on it.