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YouTube - Glenn Beck: "We need to start thinking like the Chinese"
Think Progress � Glenn Beck Has A ‘Plan’ To Sell Books With March On Washington On The Anniversary Of MLK Speech
Yesterday, while promoting his latest book at “a festive campaign-style rally” in The Villages in Florida, Fox News host Glenn Beck announced that he was crafting “a 100 year plan” that will be “radical” and will “restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting.” In his speech, which Media Matters captured on video, Beck told his followers, “we need to start thinking like the Chinese“:
BECK: I’ve done a lot of reading on history in the last few years and I was amazed to find that what we’re experiencing now is really a ticking time bomb that they designed about 100 years ago, beginning in the progressive movement. And they thought, “you know what, if we just do this and this and this and this, over time if we do it in both the Republican and Democratic parties, we will have our socialist utopia.” Well, I say again, two can play at that game. I am drafting plans now to bring us back to an America that our founders would understand. … We need to start thinking like the Chinese. I’m developing a 100 year plan for America. A 100 year plan. We will plant this idea and it will sprout roots.
At the rally and in a letter on his website, Beck said that he planned to organize a series of conventions in seven regions of the country, where his supporters can go to learn about “self-reliance, community organizing, the economy and how to be a political force in your own neighborhood and country.” The conventions will culminate in a new book by Beck called The Plan and a march on Washington to launch it:
- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.
- On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.
Hot Air’s Allahpundit notes that the date of Beck’s DC event “happens to be the anniversary of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech” by Martin Luther King, Jr. “Eschewing the title of ‘leader’ is thus a curious display of modesty from a guy who thinks his book launch is worthy of a modern-day March on Washington with him in the MLK role,” writes Allahpundit.
But not everyone thinks Beck is just elaborately promoting his next book. “He might just be trying to sell books, but there are much simpler ways to sell books,” Media Matters’ Ari Rabin-Havt told the New York Times, adding that “Beck sounded more like a presidential candidate than a pundit.”