Glenn Beck, the Fox News and talk radio personality, has unveiled something he calls the 912 Project. The name is obviously a play on the day after 9/11, but also refers to what Glenn Beck called the “9 Principles” and the “12 Values.”
The idea behind the 912 Project is apparently to raise awareness of these 9 Principles and 12 Values among as many people as possible, through the Internet and other media. The rationale seems to be is that if more people adhere to these 9 Principles and 12 Values, not only will they be better persons but the United States will be better off as well.
The 9 Principles are:
“1. America is good.
“2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
“3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
“4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
“5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
“6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
“7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
“8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
“9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.”
While an atheist or agnostic might quibble about Principle 2, on the whole Glenn Beck’s 9 Principles seem commonsensical. They would be something that the Founding Fathers would look upon with approval.
For the 912 Project, Glenn Beck also adds 12 Values, which are:
“Honesty, Reverence, Hope, Thrift, Humility, Charity, Sincerity, Moderation, Hard Work, Courage, Personal Responsibility, and Gratitude.”
There is nothing here that ought to inspire controversy either. The 12 Values seem to be a kind of restating of the things that Boy Scouts ought to be, though to be sure one word values can be open to different meanings to different people. What, for example, should one have reverence for? God? The country? One’s family? All three? Or something else?
The 912 Project does not seem to be, on its face, overtly political in the partisan sense of the word, though some are giving it that interpretation. The left wing oriented site, The Inquisitor, has this to say about the 912 Project:
“It’s more of the same that we’ve seen from the hard right recently, this whole socialism is bad, our money is being stolen for us, Barack is a Communist etc etc. While some of those points might be true, what they continue to overlook is that Bush created the mess the country is in today, and Bush was the one that run up the foreign debt and started the bailouts. But no, it’s only bad now a new, black guy takes over the mess.”
While the Inquisitor seems to be at once overwrought and snarky, there is kernel of truth there. The 912 Project has a political component in the sense that Glenn Beck seems to believe that if more people adhered to his 9 Principles and 12 Values, then the same people would make better political choices. The difference is that Glenn Beck’s 912 Project is not partisan. While Glenn Beck’s politics tends to be right of center, with a libertarian flavor, he tends to have a “plague on both your houses” approach to our political parties.
The video that announces the 912 Project seems to make that clear. Neither Bush nor Obama are mentioned by name, though both appear in the video. But no one party or group of politicians escapes blame for problems ranging from the war on terror, to chaos in Mexico, to the economic crisis.
Glenn Beck’s 912 Project, along with the American Tea Party Movement, seem to result from a feeling of discontent that has been percolating for some years. The advent of Barack Obama has only started to crystallize things. The 912 Project appears to be something rare in the history of political protest movements as it appears to take a moral philosophy approach to politics. Believe in certain things, the logic goes, and then one will act in certain ways, including in the poll booth.
Will the 912 Project have an effect on American politics? Stay tuned.
Source: The 912 Project: Glenn Beck Principles and Values – Video, Beth, Blue Star Chronicles, March 13th, 2009
The 912 Project: Guns, God and Anti-Government from Glenn Beck, Duncan Riley, The Inquisitor, March 13th, 2009
912 Project Video, LALate, March 13th, 2009
Obama and the New American Tea Party Protest Movement, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, February 28th, 2009
