No Beck, Tom Hayden Did Not Suggest That Samantha Power Favors The “Destruction Of Capitalism”

Glenn Beck is swiftly becoming a parody of himself.

On his Fox News show, Beck decided to play free association. It went something like this: Beck's nemesis Frances Fox Piven is featured in a photo with 1960s peace activist Tom Hayden, Hayden recently wrote an article in The Nation about President Obama's adviser Samantha Power, and therefore Power might favor the “destruction of capitalism.”

After connecting Piven to Hayden through a photo taken in 1968 (before Power was born), Beck quoted Hayden as saying that Power “began to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical values.” Beck then added:

BECK: Now wait a minute, she's the one that's whispering in the president's ear about who we should support in the Middle East. Forget about war for oil. War for radical values. Gee, I wonder which radical value he could be talking about. I doubt it's the destruction of capitalism because that would be crazy."

Now, if we were to play Beck's game, we would note that Hayden's piece is skeptical of Power's advice that we should intervene in Libya, and Beck is skeptical of the U.S. military actions regarding Libya. So Beck and Hayden must be in league with each other. But we're not that crazy.

So we'll stick to pointing out that Hayden did not remotely suggest that Power favors the “destruction of capitalism” in his piece for The Nation.

As Beck quoted, Hayden said: “Over a long conversation with Power in December 2003, I was struck by the generational factor in her thinking. If she had experienced Vietnam in her early twenties, I felt, she would have joined the radical left, suspicious always of American power.” But Hayden acknowledged that Power -- unlike 1960s activists -- has often advocated for the use of force in humanitarian intervention. Indeed, he suggested in his piece that Power is one of the “humanitarian hawks.”

Hayden also criticized Power for being too focused on international issues rather than “domestic policy and politics,” like “rent subsidies or pension funds”:

Perhaps the greatest problem in Power's worldview is an elitism that scorns domestic policy and politics, the very domain where she believes the crusade to stop genocide is so often “lost.” Anyone primarily concerned with domestic priorities, in her view, must be an isolationist and thus an obstacle to the global struggle for human rights. One can't imagine Power worrying very much about, say, rent subsidies or pension funds.

Why would someone who wants the “destruction of capitalism” focus on international human rights issues and not give a fig about “rent subsidies or pension funds”? It's almost as if Power isn't interested in bringing down capitalism as we know it.