Glenn Beck has been widely considered the spiritual leader of the 9/12 and Tea Party movement. Does all of this mean that the pundits are starting to distance themselves from the Tea Party movement?

Just because we are not happy with the far left Progressivism does not mean we embrace the inside-the-beltway Republicanism. That age is over.

Glenn Beck represents the New New Conservative Populism that combines an ‘everyman’ spirit with conservative principles and the tactics of leftist radicalism. The problem is that too many Neocons and second- and third-generation Buckley-ites believe that they deserve complete control of the Conservative movement and they seem to believe with such aplomb that the useful idiots, the right-leaning Wal-Mart shopping unwashed masses, will crawl back to the Conservative cognizant elite once we see with Beck that he, the Emperor, has no clothes. They believe they will regain their former power.

Forget it. You really just don’t get it. There is a frame-breaking movement afoot, the old schemas do not work anymore, but, sadly, Mr. Frum and many others of the old guard are too entrenched to understand it. Proof of your misunderstanding is self-evident in these Beck-related postings.

The issue isn’t life, but personhood. Is a fetus a person? Is an embryo a person? There is no scientific definition of “person,” and hence no real scientific answer to that. It remains a matter of personal philosophy.

If Ron Paul wants to legislate that personhood begins at conception (meaning that a newly fertilized egg gets Fourteenth Amendment rights), then he’s not being libertarian on this issue at least.

If Paul would support a federal law that defines life beginning at conception, then he’s for a federal law outlawing abortions. Which would make him not particularly libertarian on the issue, since how to define “life” is a clear moral issue that it open to interpretation, and should be left up to local communities, or perhaps even individuals.