You know that you are in for a treat when Glenn Beck kicks off his program by warning his audience that what he is about to explain to them “is going to sound like a crazy conspiracy theory” but, he assures them, it most certainly is not.

In the case of last night’s program, Beck went about explaining how the 2009 stimulus legislation was intentionally filled with outrageous spending programs because the “progressives” knew that they would serve as fodder to distract people from the really dangerous things also contained in the legislation, such as money for the states to develop a “longitudinal data system” that will track student performance in public schools.

Citing random passages out of a document entitled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance—Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century” [PDF] from the Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, Beck declared that these data systems will be collecting a cornucopia of sensitive personal information on children and their families while placing monitoring sensors in the chairs and on their skin and filming them with cameras that can detect emotions; they’d even be installing MRI systems in the classroom.

And this is all happening because the corporations have merged with the government in order to implement “System X: a government run by a single party in control of labor, media, education and banking; joined by big business to further their mutual collective goals.” Beck’s “System X” is an idea based on the book “The Road We Are Traveling” by Stuart Chase.

“This is a progressive bonanza,” Beck warned, “and if it’s allowed to be in our schools in any form and become the common core of America’s next generation, it will destroy America and the system of freedom as we know it … The corporations and the government are in bed together and this is evil stuff”: