Glenn Beck, Community Organizer

The Fox News star’s plunge into political activism is more than rank hypocrisy. It’s the work of an unprincipled propagandist who’s draining his followers’ bank accounts.

Remember when Glenn Beck accused President Obama of winning followers like a totalitarian demagogue, warned against the nefarious tendencies of community organizers, and was himself defended against critics by Jonah Goldberg, who called Beck "a libertarian populist?”

Now the cable television host is touting a "radical," details-to-be-announced mass movement that promises to save the United States.

Even if Mr. Beck adopts my every political position, however, I'd still count him a man that all principled people should denounce.

Its name: "The Plan." It includes a series of adult education seminars where citizens will be taught political activism, self-reliance, and the dread community organizing. The often tearful Fox News personality also promises a book that will include more specifics. "We need to start thinking like the Chinese," Mr. Beck said at a recent rally. "I’m developing a 100 year plan for America."

• Benjamin Sarlin: The Man Who Beat Glenn Beck

• Watch Glenn Beck’s Craziest Moments At long last, prudent conservatives and libertarians are growing uncomfortable with Mr. Beck's rhetoric. I hope Mr. Goldberg is among them, as there isn't anyone better to write a National Review take-down of The Plan, titled Libertarian Fascism: How Glenn Beck Got Cover from the Right Until It Was Too Late to Stop Him. It wouldn’t require much work. Large excerpts could be copied and pasted from the paperback version of Liberal Fascism, Mr. Goldberg’s recent bestseller:

And then something funny happened. A self-proclaimed ‘transformative’ leader formed a self-declared 'movement,' powered in large measure by a sense of historical destiny ('This is the moment!'), yearning for national restoration ('We will make this nation great!'), demanding national unity at all costs, and glorifying itself for its own youthful energy. At times his most conspicuous followers were blindly devoted to a cult of personality with deeply racial undertones and often explicit appeals to messianic fervor.

• Reihan Salam: How Glenn Beck Saves Lives Lucky for us, the change that Mr. Beck most desires is the kind his followers give the Barnes and Noble cashiers. Earnest revolutionaries sometimes lay out first principles in written manifestos, but I've never known one to sync the revolution itself with Simon and Schuster's book release schedule. It is nevertheless unfortunate that this "crazy-as-a-Fox-News-personality" blowhard will continue his outsize influence on public discourse, and continue to deplete Red American bank accounts in increments of $29.99 plus sales tax.

If the best overall account of Mr. Beck is the three part profile in the online magazine Salon, the most concise distillation of his style belongs to the libertarian scholar Charles Murray: "Beck uses tactics that include tiny snippets of film as proof of a person’s worldview, guilt by association, insinuation, and occasionally outright goofs like the fake quote," he writes. "To put it another way, I as a viewer have no way to judge whether Beck is right. I have to trust that the snippets are not taken out of context, that the dubious association between A and B actually has evidence to support it, and that his numbers are accurate. It is impossible to have that trust." What Glenn Beck does "is propaganda," Mr. Murray concludes. "Maybe propaganda has its place, but let’s not kid ourselves."

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