Classic Jon Stewart

It was fun to watch Stewart dismantle Glenn Beck's argument that progressivism was the disease that ails America. At the Annual CPAC conference, Beck launched into a tirade that blamed everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to FDR for the malaise facing the American economy... (Teddy Roosevelt? Really?!) At one point Beck claimed that he learned all of his quasi anti-progressive American history from the Library at which point Stewart stopped and said:

"Glenn, the library isn't free! It's paid for with tax money. Free public libraries are the result of the Progressive movement to communally share books. The first public library was the Boston public library in 1854. It's statement of purpose: every citizen has the right to access community owned resources. Community owned? That sounds just like communist. You're a communist!"

It just reminds me that on a fundamental level even my sense of humor tilts to the left. Stewart, for the most part, bases his humor on showing how off, how stupid, and how ass-backward his targets are. Beck, on the other hand, tends to base his humor on the grand idea that we are all victims of a conspiracy. To my mind one of the problems with Beck's thesis is that the conservatives are honest and pure in their intentions. But, once we start shining the light on one conspiracy can the Republicans really stand up to such scrutiny? Won't we find just as many holes in conservatism as progressivism? To state it more clearly, I don't think either point of view has a lock on the truth. Both need each other and unfortunately we are stuck in the middle. I think change will happen but it's not going to be as neat and tidy as Obama lead us to believe.