In a recent Weekly Standard article, Matthew Continetti criticized Glenn Beck for recommending a book by Carroll Quigley to his audience:

Beck has recommended Skousen’s Naked Communist (1958) and Naked Capitalist (1970), which lay out the writer’s paranoid scenarios in detail. The latter book, for example, draws on Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope (1966), which argues that the history of the 20th century is the product of secret societies in conflict. “Carroll Quigley laid open the plan in Tragedy and Hope,” says a character in Beck’s new novel, The Overton Window. “The only hope to avoid the tragedy of war was to bind together the economies of the world to foster global stability and peace.”
For Beck, conspiracy theories are not aberrations. They are central to his worldview. They are the natural consequence of assuming that the world hangs by a thread, and that everyone is out to get you.

In an interview with National Review Online, Beck responded to Continetti’s charge. I asked Beck whether he has any regrets about the Quigley citation.

“Hang on just a second,” Beck answers. “You mean Carroll Quigley, the guy who got Bill Clinton his Rhodes scholarship? I’m nuts for quoting him? Wow. So I shouldn’t pay attention to the guy who got Clinton a Rhodes scholarship? Um, okay. Just read the one line in [The Overton Window] about Carroll Quigley and ask the average American whether it seems like that’s happening. I’ll bet you that 80 percent of them would say absolutely.”