Free THE OVERTON WINDOW by Glenn Beck Page A

don’t need to create a conspiracy theory to explain what’s going on around us today. The ruling class has written and published their plans and their history, as plain as day.”
    She picked up and held out a massive hardbound book.
    “This book is titled
Tragedy and Hope.
It’s nearly fourteen hundred pages of the history and the relentless goals of the enemy. We know this book holds the truth because it’s not a wild piece of fiction written by one of us; it’s a calm and rational book of facts written by an insider and historian sympathetic to the goals of the power elite, and a mentor to presidents, by the way, named Carroll Quigley.”
    A man behind her reached out and exchanged that large book in her hands for an older, thinner one, and she held it out. “If that’s their history,then this is an early, published example of their plan of action.
The Promise of American Life,
by Herbert Croly, first printed in 1909, before the beginning of the great decline. Its author advocated what he called a New Nationalism. Big government, ever-expanding programs and departments, a nanny state with confiscatory powers and jurisdiction over every aspect of our lives. He believed that in the new Industrial Age the people simply weren’t fit to rule themselves as the well-meaning but misguided Founders had envisioned.
    “Croly renounced his own life’s work in the end, when he saw what he’d helped to set in motion. But his writings lived on, and they influenced every fundamental change brought on by what became known as ‘the progressive movement’ in the first half of the twentieth century, from the Federal Reserve Act and the income tax to the spiral into crushing debt and dependence that began with the New Deal.”
    She put the book down, and spoke quietly and deliberately when she began again.
    “But Herbert Croly was not an evil man.” This declaration was met with silence from the crowd, and she let it hang for a while. “He wanted a better life for the people of his country. He wrote about his ideas on achieving that, and he was free to do so. America today is full of opinions and movements and agendas that differ radically from ours; even among us here, we differ, and that’s the way it will always be. The danger comes when good intentions are hijacked and perverted by the culture of corruption—when those elected to represent us begin to act not for your own good, but for their own gain.
    “It’s the same today. People who, for their own gain, would replace equal justice with social justice, trade individual freedom for an all-powerful, all-knowing central government, forsake the glorious creative potential of the American individual, the beating heart of this nation, for a two-class society in which the elites rule and all below them are all the same: homogenized, subordinate, indebted, and powerless. That’s what corruption will do, and we’ve allowed it to run rampant for too long.”
    Noah looked away from the speaker to take a gauge of the crowd; old habits die hard. Nearly everyone throughout the room was engaged and listening, but there were exceptions. A variety of men and women, about ten or fifteen, were scattered around the bar looking just slightly unlike the others. It wasn’t their dress that was out of place, but rather their demeanor. They were far more concerned with one another than with what was happening onstage. And at least half of them were fiddling with small digital videocameras.
    “Hey,” Noah whispered, tapping the table near Molly’s arm. She only shushed him, keeping her attention on the woman in the spotlight. With a last uneasy glance around the room, he turned back to the speaker as well.
    “There are thirty-five thousand registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C.” the woman said, to a scattering of boos and hisses that arose from the onlookers. “That’s nearly seventy lobbyists for each member of Congress. Together they spent almost three and a half billion