Beck could have misspoken, or (more accurately) used a poor choice of words... Lord knows we've done that enough when it is the three of us together! Perhaps, after years of close association, Stu and Pat knew exactly what he meant and intended, while I did not.
As you pointed out, though... WE are not speaking before an audience of 1.5 million people, while HE is. It is incumbent on him to make sure his statements are accurate... otherwise, the errors and mistakes are going to be applied to him until he is either irrelevant in the mainstream or he learns the lesson and corrects the errors prior to air-time.
I did not make the automatic association between "youth camp" and "Hitler Youth". I belonged to several different political associations in my youth, especially in college... and in that mix I will even add that I was a frequent participant in gatherings and activities at the campus Newman Center (admittedly, a religious group... but politics was always a topic of discussion and debate). How much money comes from "political" groups and goes into such organizations as the Boy Scouts of America? The YM/WCA? 4H? Big Brother/Big Sister? All these organizations teach a multitude of society's facets to our youths and young adults... and none should be associated with the purely subversive and utterly immoral Hitler Youth of the 30s. Denying that such organizations as these face political associations (real or perceived) that are antithetical to their nature is simply idiotic. Just ask any mainstream liberal today what the purpose of the Boy Scouts of America is, and I'm sure you'll get an ear full of explanations centered on the anti-gay foundation and pro-Christian bias of the group... when, in point of fact, this is simply NOT the case at all. Perhaps the Young Democrats and the Young Republicans are as "questionable" in their makeup as this youth camp in Norway is?
Still, as you stated... media taint and poor word choices aside, nothing we say now can remove the culpability of the twisted young man for the actions he took last week. His violence and madness lashed out at the very society and people he was purporting to want to defend... and calling the man a "right-wing" Christian extremist is like calling the Final Solution a "failed policy of domestic restructuring". Nothing in his actions or intent can in any way be associated with or be defended by Christianity as any rational human being understands it. All that sort of association does is to "transfer" or "share" the culpability of his actions with Christianity at large, for the sole benefit of those that hate traditional Judeo-Christian morals and ethics.
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