Glenn Beck and Plato

Did you ever think you’d see those two in the same sentence?

Beck has attacked Rocco Landesman, the National Endowment for the Arts Chairman, for telling Valerie Jarrett that he thought he could “use art to change the world.”

Matt Yglesias draws the comparison to Plato, whose disdain for “poets” and their capacity for political subversion led him to cast them out of The Republic.  Further, while he admits Beck is considerably more skeptical of government power, Yglesias contends that the American right wing tends strongly toward Platonic authoritarianism.

-Colin

Related posts:

  1. Whose fault is Glenn Beck?
  2. Congress – run by the minority?
  3. Max Weber and realism
  4. A changing political philosophy?
  5. ‘Tis better to receive than to support

November 2, 2009 · Filed Under Colin, Politics

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  • Editors

    Jacob Bronsther is a law student at NYU, a former Fulbright Scholar to Mauritius, and a graduate of Cornell University. He has an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

  • Sam Gill is a consultant in Washington and a graduate of the University of Chicago. He studied Political Theory at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

  • Marc Grinberg is a Presidential Management Fellow with the U.S. government and a graduate of Princeton University. He earned an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

  • John Rood is the founder of Next Step Test Preparation and a graduate of Michigan State University. He has an AM in Political Theory from the University of Chicago.

  • Luke Freedman is a student at Carleton College, pursuing a double major in Philosophy and Political Science.


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