Yes, that headline is a rhetorical question. Because no mainstream columnist or commentator in America has ever been as far to the left as Pat Buchanan or Bill Kristol is to the right. Much less Glenn Beck.

Once, I believed Beck merely had the least brainpower of the prominent right-wing commentators. Good for a 30-second head-shaking visit while punching buttons on the remote.

But that was before he started spouting his Obama-is-not-a-Nazi-wink-wink theme. And before he moved over to Foxaganda in February and hosted a few ex-CIA and ex-military guests who engaged in armchair war gaming for a civil war against Obama's "dictatorship."

It became clear to me that despite the paucity of his gray matter, Beck's ultimate mindset is no different than the Klansmen who occasionally showed up to intimidate people during my childhood in southwest Georgia. Not too bright, to be sure, but influential because people who would never participate in a lynching never worked to bring to justice people who did.

Beck's demonization of President Obama depends on a rancid upsidedown discourse grounded in profoundly disturbing cultural resentment, which contains its own special illogic. It's not original, nor clever, but it nevertheless has an impact. Just as its fascist precursors had an impact. From his program today: