Wednesday morning The Blaze’s Glenn Beck announced it was “deadly to my career” for him to provide truckloads of meals and soccer balls as a way to “help care for some of the roughly 60,000 underage refugees who have crossed into America illegally in 2014.”
Early Thursday morning on “Morning Joe,” the left-wing Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski did exactly what I feared the media would do after Beck’s announcement: they trashed conservatives who disagreed with Beck as lacking in compassion. Scarborough even mocked them as un-Christian. And they are not alone.
The problem isn’t what Beck did. The problem is how he did it.
Beck’s desire to help kids caught in a geopolitical crossfire through no fault of their own is laudable. We all want to help. I’ve yet to hear anyone argue that it’s wrong to use American taxpayer dollars to feed, house, and offer medical care to these children. No one opposes that.
Beck thinks more needs to be done.
Fine.
But for Beck (and the media currently using him to club conservatives) to pretend there isn’t a compassionate argument to be made against what Beck’s doing is simply wrong, unfair, and a bit sanctimonious.
It’s just a fact that these children are already being cared for once they arrive here. I’m not even sure they need Beck’s charity. Regardless, the unthinkable danger for them occurs during the journey across a continent to get here. It’s not just the natural elements these children have to worry about, I’m hearing on the news that fully one-third of young girls are sexually assaulted during the trip.
Therefore, the truly compassionate thing to do is to ensure you’re not doing anything that might encourage more parents to send their unaccompanied children on that harrowing trek. And it is not insane, unreasonable, or lacking in compassion to argue that news of a major American media figure greeting children at the border with toys could be used by the drug smugglers and human traffickers already exploiting these kids as a way to recruit more.
Beck obviously doesn’t believe his acts of charity will exploited in that way.
But rather than acknowledge the other side has a reasonable argument against what he’s doing that is every bit as humane as his, he chose to puff himself up as a martyr and handed the likes of “Morning Joe” ready-made talking points to bash his own supporters and conservatives in general.
And if those like Scarborough want to argue over who is and isn’t acting Christian…
Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. “So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Beck talking about his border charity as told by his own site, The Blaze:
“Everybody is telling me I’m seeing subscriptions down; I’m seeing Mercury One donations down,” Beck said, growing emotional. “I’m getting violent emails from people who say I’ve ‘betrayed the Republic.’ Whatever. I’ve never taken a position more deadly to my career than this — and I have never, ever taken a position that is more right than this.”
Like I said, I don’t mind that Beck did. The problem is how he went about it. Beck also went on his radio show to trash conservatives as a whole as looking “like they just want judgment” as opposed to mercy.
Beck’s fans should expect more from him than this. Rather than put himself above his own for a sanctimonious finger-wagging lecture, Beck should be using his spotlight to explain why his fans feel the way the way they do — even if he disagrees with them.
Instead he throws them under the bus for the likes of a Joe Scarborough to feast on.
Had Beck simply done what he thought was right instead of dividing everyone through the public trumpeting of his works and bragging about the “danger” he was putting himself in and harshly judging those who dared disagree with him, everyone, including Beck, would have been better served.
Most importantly, had Beck just gone about doing what he thinks is right as quietly as someone with his profile could, it would have lessened the possibility of his works being used as additional recruiting material for the human traffickers exploiting these poor children.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC