According to an article on the online BuzzFeed website former Fox News host and political commentator Glenn Beck announced yesterday that he's relaunching The Blaze TV network as a global libertarian news network.

As most Dallas/Ft. Worth residents know Beck moved to the Metroplex in July 2011 after leaving Fox with a promise to "build a film and television center and radio center in Dallas" and started GBTV, later renamed The Blaze.

He and his family currently live in the Fort Worth suburb of Westlake.

However, the new "libertarian network" (see video) will broadcast from "showy new offices" in New York City with a promise to feature topics that no one else will do, such as "episodes exposing the NSA for turning America into a 'surveillance state,' and warning that the UN 'want[s] your guns,' both big issues in libertarian circles."

And "libertarian circles" is right. As illustrated in "Where do libertarians come from?" libertarianism is not a monolithic philosophy. Libertarian thought ranges from rightwing "libertarian-leaning" conservatism all the way to anarchistic "Left Libertarian" beliefs with stops at Voluntaryism, Agorism, Anarcho-Capitalism, The Libertarian Party and other variations along the way.

Beck himself told BuzzFeed "I consider myself a libertarian... I'm a lot closer to Penn Jillette than I am to Chuck Hagel."

(Jillette, one half of the "Penn & Teller" illusionist team, explains his own take on libertarianism at libertarianism.org.)

The fundamental axiom of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle, that no person or group has a right to initiate force, intimidation or fraud against anyone else.

A person's claim to the libertarian label is deemed valid only to the extent to which he or she consistently adheres to this axiom

Thus, many hardcore libertarians never really accepted the Republican Party's "libertarian-leaning" Ron Paul as one of their own because they found too many exceptions to the non-aggression axiom, and they will almost certainly see Glenn Beck as just another libertarian-leaning conservative whose "libertarian lite" social and political views will give the general public a false idea of libertarianism.

But Brian Lehman's article in United Liberty, Glenn Beck’s new “libertarian” network is a good thing, may have summed up many libertarians' concerns. "By no means should we be naive here" he says of Beck's motivations and "general looniness" regarding conspiracy theories, but adds "The libertarian worldview simply must reach a wider audience, and it may just take an imperfect messenger to do so."

 

http://www.examiner.com/article/glenn-beck-announces-global-libertarian-news-network?cid=rss