by Eli Bowman

Glenn Beck is not the same guy he was a few years ago when he was at Fox News. Back then he was all about widening the schism in our country by reinforcing the right and throwing any kind of shade he could get his hands on at the left. He would do wild and wacky things on set to get attention and deliver a unique message to rise above all the rest of the biased noise at Fox News. In other words, he was just another guy on the boob tube talking about how ugly the left was.

That guy at Fox News is nowhere near the guy he is today…and his audience has undergone an equally impressive transformation. Today he literally weeps about how far we’ve strayed from the originalist ideals born during the founding era: ideals that are liberty focused and steeped in the freedom musings of Montesquieu and Paine. He decries injustice everywhere, not just when it fits into the conservative agenda. He will throw any politician under the bus if they lie, cheat, or steal, regardless of the R or D after their name. He has become much more libertarian (or Conservatarian) in his own ideology and less divisive in general. He has produced massive rallies for not politicians or campaigns, but for the unity of the human race. He consistently invokes MLK and has been a #NeverTrump loyalist from the jump. He cringes when he recalls what he used to be at Fox. He’s changed.

His evolution hasn’t gone without its consequences though. He has lost a chunk of his establishment-loving audience, especially amid his regular criticisms of Donald Trump. Have you looked at Beck’s FB page lately? No matter what he puts out, the comments section is absolutely riddled with hecklers and bitter ex-fans claiming he’s in the bag for Hillary Clinton for all of his Trump bashing. These crazy exes are so mad over their breakup with Beck that they’ve taken to uber-meta remarks about how they refuse to subscribe to The Blaze (Beck’s media company) or follow him any longer…on Beck’s own FB page. It’s like they just can’t say goodbye.

Well, they need to get over it fast, because the old Glenn Beck that they used to love is gone, and he isn’t coming back. He may shed many tears, but they aren’t over his lost listeners.

Those that are left are such loyal fans that they have donated millions of dollars to Beck’s non-profit, Mercury One, which benefits a myriad of people across the globe, including persecuted Christians in the Middle East, by flying them into new lands to start life over again. These same fans have stuck through because they have evolved right along with Glenn Beck. They don’t want to hate…they want to love. They don’t want divisiveness, they want common-ground solutions based in the founding documents. They have found themselves smelling the privately-owned, free market roses in the libertarian garden along with Beck. Even though he campaigned for Ted Cruz, Beck was quick to informally endorse Libertarian Party candidate Austin Petersen for President, and his purified audience loved it.

Will Glenn Beck’s listeners still bash the left if the fruit is low-hanging enough? Probably. But they would rather leave it alone if it meant working together to get back to the Constitution. That’s something they wouldn’t have done just a few years ago, before they were purified.