(crossposted on five before chaos)

and that would be… Glenn Beck. Yeah, that Glenn Beck, he of the hysterics, teabagging, hatemongering, and America's most high-profile purveyor of right-wing bullshit conspiracy theories. And of course, you know the other guy, Thomas “Obviously a Good Confederate” Naylor, of the punchline known as Second Vermont Republic, the Vermont seccessionist group that GMD brought to your attention two years ago of having lots of friends in the Neo-Confederate movement.

So, anyways, fact-checking (oh, who am I kidding, reality) has never been one of Beck's strong suits, so of course he has Naylor on his show for an interview. Given that Naylor's completely lost the support of the left in Vermont due to his love of the Stars n' Bars and all it stands for, he must figure, what the hell, why not shoot for the paranoid right? Beck heaps tons of praise on him, of course, and unquestionably accepts Naylor's ridiculous claim that a whopping 60,000 registered Vermont  voters support secession (yet SVR, oddly enough, has about 1,000 supporters), and I've yet to meet anyone who takes Naylor seriously at this point. Well, I can think of one person… I'll get to him in a minute.

You can read the very cordial interview between Beck and Naylor here. Naylor starts off by thanking Beck for “stirring the pot” (would that be those rabidly succesful tea parties, perhaps?) , and then imparts such wisdom as:

The movement rolls on, in spite of the fact that Vermont is probably the most left-wing state in the country and voted very strongly for Barack Obama. This poses a challenge for us. But people are beginning to see that, really, there's not much difference between his policies and those of George W. Bush…. People were more angry at George W. Bush, but now, under Obama with the economic meltdown, there's genuine fear.

Yes, Unreconstrcted Confederates such as Naylor have a lot to fear from Obama, at least in their warped world view. As for this “movement rolling on”, well, Dr. Naylor, that train left the station two years ago. 

Beck, like Naylor's organization, also has the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the exemplary hate-watch group which released a report last year on SVR, with this beautiful quote from Naylor himself that really shows what the man is all about:

In the face of these criticisms, Naylor remains defiant. “I don’t give a shit what you write,” he told the Report. “If someone tells me that I shouldn’t associate with the League of the South, it guarantees that I will associate with the League of the South.”

Beck is on record as saying how the far-right, racist John Birchers are “starting to make more and more sense to him.”

Tommy Reb doesn't have too many friends left in these parts, but he can always count on Rob “Is he a racist? I dont know. And frankly, it is none of my damn business, at a personal level,” Williams of Vermont Commons, whose integrity lies flapping in the wind like a noose from a magnolia tree, posted in a blog post at that site that I'm not going to link to, the Beck video, with this brief commentary:

And Mr. Beck seems surprisingly lucid and thoughtful this evening.

Indeed. These people never seem to learn, PhD's notwithstanding.