After teasing his audience for days with cryptic Disney Land imagery and the promise of incredible news, Glenn Beck, the vile charlatan who’s made a career of fleecing America’s most fearful and ignorant, announced that he intends to build a $2 billion Libertarian utopia in rural Texas loosely modeled on Galt’s Gulch, the fictional community imagined by the unashamedly-sociopathic Ayn Rand in her novel Atlas Shrugged. If you scroll down, you’ll find video of Beck announcing the project, but, first, here’s a brief overview on the project from Right Wing Watch.
…Beck revealed that his intention to “go Galt” is quite literal, unveiling grandiose plans to create an entirely self-sustaining community called Independence Park that will provide its own food and energy, produce television and film content, host research and development, serve as a marketplace for products and ideas, while also housing a theme park and serving as a residential community. At the center — in the middle of the lake that is itself larger than all of Disney Land – Beck (with the help of David Barton) will create a massive “national archive”/learning center where people can send their children to be “deprogrammed” and elected officials can come to learn “the truth”…
David “Hate is a Virtue” Barton, by the way, is the evangelical minister who founded the organization WallBuilders, a Texas-based group that promotes the view that it’s a “myth” that the United States Constitution insists upon a wall of separation between church and state. (You would think they’d call their organization WallRemovers, but maybe they haven’t thought it all the way through.) Barton is probably best known as the bestselling author of the book The Jefferson Lies, which had to be pulled from store shelves by Christian publisher Thomas Nelson recently, when it became clear that much of it was fabricated. (Fortunately, the book, which was voted “the least credible history book in print” by the users of the History News Network website, will soon have a second life, as Glenn Beck has announced that he intends to republish it in spite of the fact that it’s not historically accurate.)
Now, here’s Beck presenting the vision… Prepare to be completely engorged!
So, if you’re an angry, middle-aged white guy, who’s never amounted to much, and know, deep down in your heart, that it’s because big government has stacked the deck against you, now you have something to live for – a Libertarian paradise where rugged individuals can really prosper, unfettered by laws and the societal norms imposed by the liberal elite. Imagine yourself, a big gun on your hip, running a thriving business empire, surrounded by young, adoring, voluptuous women. This could all be yours. You know you deserve it…
Now imagine several thousand of these men, all of whom bought into this fantasy, all moving to the same parcel of fallow farmland in the middle of Texas. It would make Lord of the Flies
And here’s my idea: I want to raise enough money through Kickstarter to buy a home in Independence Park with the intention of establishing a small island of sanity… a listening post. And I want to conduct a national search for an undocumented super-gay scientist who can live there, proudly representing our interests, and documenting the experience… Wouldn’t that be the most incredible reality series ever? Who among us wouldn’t wake up each morning and tune in to see which of our favorite characters had decided to “go Galt” by speeding the wrong way down a street in a homemade, coal-burning car?
But, as well all know, this isn’t likely to happen. (Beck just comes up with these insane ideas to drive more traffic to his website and radio program.) Sure, it’s been reported that Beck has bought some land in Texas, and, I’m sure, if he could make a few million at it, he’d be all for it, but I can’t imagine that he’d really want to put himself in a situation where he’d have to be in character 24-7, performing his ‘Obama wants to eat the elderly‘ schtick for every nut who’s inherited enough money to buy a house in what I heard someone refer to as a “survivalist EPCOT.” But I’m keeping my fingers crossed, in hopes that, one day, I can read transcripts of their city council meetings. If you thought the city that Tom Monaghan built in the swamps of Florida was a disaster, you haven’t seen anythign yet. This, my friends, if it actually comes to pass, is going to make Jonestown look like Mayberry R.F.D.. Can you just imagine the kinds of people who would be attracted to move to a town ruled over by Glenn Beck acolytes? Now imagine them all in one city, operating outside of any kind of accepted societal construct. Do you know any Glenn Beck fans? If so, can you imagine them growing their own food, operating their own university, performing their own heart transplants? Would there be traffic lights? I can’t see John Galt, the purely ego-driven protagonist in Atlas Shrugged, stopping for a red light? How about zoning laws? Surely there wouldn’t be any of those. Who, after all, wants “big government” telling them where they can and can’t build their chicken processing plants, and dispose of their chemical waste? And, as I’m sure there wouldn’t be taxes, how would they maintain a fire department? Would it be a for-profit entity that only fought the fires of their wealthy subscribers? And, when it snowed, would volunteers plow the streets? I’ve got so many questions… (And, yes, I realize that state and federal law would come into play at some point, as this would be happening in Texas, and not Ghana, but I like the idea of these folks being left completely to their own devices, putting all of their theories into practice. I suspect they’d succumb to cannibalism alarmingly fast… like within days.)
And, now that I’ve had my say, here’s Beck’s perspective, from GlennBeck.com.
While Independence is very much a dream at this point, the proposed city-theme park hybrid would bring several of Glenn’s seemingly disconnected projects into one place. Media, live events, small business stores, educational projects, charity, entertainment, news, information, and technology R&D – all of these things would have a home in Independence. With the rest of the country and the world going away from the values of freedom, responsibility and truth, Independence would be a place built on the very foundation of those principles. A retreat from the world where entrepreneurs, artists, and creators could come to put their ideas to work. A place for families to bring their children to be inspired… Glenn believes that he can bring the heart and the spirit of Walt’s early Disneyland ideas into reality. Independence, USA wouldn’t be about rides and merchandise, but would be about community and freedom…
[snarky aside: If you really want to see a community “(move) away from the values of freedom,” settle down in Independence and try to open a mosque.]
And, lastly, here’s a clip from Glen Beck’s media arm The Blaze:
While the extremely ambitious project, heavily inspired by Walt Disney, is still a dream that this point, that doesn’t mean that Beck’s American Dream Labs aren’t starting to build the pieces.
The streets of America were not paved in gold, they were paved in “people’s dreams and hard work,” Beck said before walking the audience through a sketch of the proposed development. There won’t be a “Gap” or an “Ann Taylor,” Beck noted, although the park would contain a marketplace. It will be a place where people cultivate their visions and ideas. In essence, Independence Park would be a business incubator on a grand-scale revolving around “education, independence, entrepreneurship and apprenticeship.”
And “apprenticeship,” if you’re curious, translates to child labor. (Beck notes in the video above that Benjamin Franklin, for instance, was an apprentice at eight years of age.)
OK, that’s going to have to be in for now… It’s time to close my eyes and dream of Independence. My hope is to have a marketing campaign worked out for Glenn by the time I awake.
update: OK, it still needs a bit of refining, but here’s the tagline that I awoke with. “Independence, USA… come for the child brothels, stay for the gun fights.” Do you like it? If you have better ideas, let me know.
Tomorrow evening, at Ypsilanti’s 
For me, contributing a single quote to an article about Michigan on Rachel Maddow’s website is a bigger deal, even if it doesn’t translate to more readers. It means that I’ve been successful, in some little way, in getting a message out to the world about what’s going on here. (Blogging is like throwing a message in a bottle out into the sea every day, and waiting to see if anything comes back.) In and of itself, a fleeting mention on Maddow’s website may not have that much of an affect, but I’d like to imagine that there’s a cumulative impact. Maybe, in some tiny way, I think, I’m helping shift public opinion, making it more likely that progressives across the country will contribute money to the campaigns of our local candidates (like 
And that’s kind of what happened a few days ago, when I channeled my righteous indignation toward the administration in Lansing for their blatant politicization of the Pure Michigan campaign. Not only did I find the politics behind the ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal objectionable, but, as a marketing person, it pissed me off that they’d sullied what had been a valuable brand. In our highly-partisan world, Pure Michigan had been something that we all seemed to be able to agree upon. Despite all the other bullshit, we knew we could all come together and say, “Damn, we live in a big, beautiful state.” But, the Snyder administration, when they decided to use the Pure Michigan campaign as a platform from which to push their corporatist right-to-work agenda, screwed all of that up. They made Pure Michigan a joke when they posted that ad in the Wall Street Journal, proudly declaring that union-busing was “Pure Michigan.” And, then, as if that weren’t enough, they went a step further, saying that we were witnessing a “perfect storm” in Michigan, not realizing, apparently, the connotation of that phrase. Well, 
